Hank's Place

That's A New One...

2007-06-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

I was perusing my junk mail folder this evening and found a new twist on the classic 419 phishing scheme. You know the one:



Dear Sucker,

    I am sitting on a pile of cash that I'm trying to get
out of Country X. If you agree to be the front man we can
split the money.

                                Sincerely,
                                Bad Person.

Digression; does anybody fall for these anymore? I can see that if you were the first person to ever get this e-mail you might be tempted to go for it. But now?

But back to the new twist. This one purported to be from a lawyer (barrister?) in England and he represents the estate of one of the victims of the London Subway Blasts. All I have to do say I'm the next of kin and I can get 40% of 11,000,000 Pounds. He gets 50% and the remaining 10% goes to overhead. Such a deal. I was tempted to try messing with him, but he doesn't check his e-mail very often. He said I should call him instead. And the phone number is even in Great Britain. Talk about attention to detail!

Ethical Stem Cells

2007-06-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

Now I admit that I didn't hear (or read since I was reading Closed Captions on the silent TV in the lunch room at work) the whole story, but I could swear that one of the justifications that President Biff (gratuitous Back To The Future reference) used when vetoing the Stem Cell bill was that he didn't want to force people to pay taxes to support something that violated their ethical beliefs. That makes perfect sense to me, after all nobody in the country has the slightest ethical problem with funding an unprovoked war of aggression and the ensuing occupation of said country. Woot.

If I'd a been there...

2007-04-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

So there's a certain amount of wanking going on about how nobody rushed the Blacksburg shooter guy. There's even been some references made to what the writers would have done if they'd have been there complete with asides about Flight 93.

Leaving aside the Monday morning quarterbacking of the dinks that have been making such comments, I need to comment myself. First, the military spends large amounts of time and money to train young men and women to be able to function when in a combat situation and under fire. Not to be heroes, but just to do what they are supposed to do. They do a pretty good job, but there are still many people who vapor lock when put in a situation where some stranger is trying kill them. Rushing head on into someone who's shooting a gun at you, with no training whatsoever is not behavior you can expect from anyone. So, with all due respect, to those of you who think you'd have done better if you were there: bullshit.

And as far as the Flight 93 references are concerned, they are a special case. The people on that flight knew (from cell-phone conversations) that at least 2 and perhaps 3 highjacked planes had already been flown into buildings. They knew they were already dead. And they had time to think about what that meant and to plan for how they were going to deal with it. Those last two bits are important. They knew they were almost certainly going to die. They had time to freak out for a while and then after that while, to make a plan. The people at VTU had a few seconds between the bad guy coming into class and the shooting to begin. They were stuck in the I'm-about-to-die portion of the response until long after the shooter had left the room. The fact that anyone did anything at all, e.g., the professor that held the door while telling his students to jump out the windows (and note that he lived through the Holocaust, no mean introduction to strangers trying to kill you) is nothing short of amazing. So again, to the people who say Flight 93 should show us what to do when someone starts shooting: bullshit.

Preemptive Bullshit Call

2007-04-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

Re: Blacksburg Shootings

It is not acceptable to put forth the proposition that this just shows that if more people carried guns this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

I do not wish to live in a society where it's considered normal for someone to pop a bolt and go shoot a bunch of people. How about if, instead, we try to shape ourselves into a place where people aren't pushed to that sort of thing, and if they are, that help is found for them before the shooting and the screaming starts?

It's like the State Fair!

2007-04-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a delightful Jesus On A Stick day!

Waking Ned Devine

2007-04-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Now it may be that I'm just getting old. But when we watched Waking Ned Devine last night on the DVD, I'm pretty sure they left something out of that was in the theatrical release. I have this recollection that somewhere near the end, maybe the very end itself, that the old woman in the wheelchair has putted out to the telephone booth and is going to drop dime on the fraud the townsfolk are perpetrating. But before she can do so, the regular parish priest, who's been off to Lourdes, gets distracted by something and runs off the road and over the cliff.

It certainly wasn't in the DVD version of the movie, but I have a semi-vivid memory of seeing that scene in the theater. Am I confabulating?

That was uncomfortable

2007-04-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

So I got laid off last Friday (along with somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the company. It's not the first time. I'm working around the house. I've tuned up the ol' resume. I've even applied for a job already. At Stanford, no less. Woo.

Yesterday, I took my signed agreement to the severance package to the former employer. While I was waiting in reception a guy who survived the purge came up and started chatting. Then he noticed that I'd signed in on the Guest Registration Book with 'N/A' in the space where one puts one's company affiliation. He got a bit red in the face, hemmed, hawed, said something to the effect of, "I did not know that." I assured him that his not knowing was OK and the conversation continued in a somewhat more constrained manner. I think he was way more weirded out about it than I was.

But this does mean that I will probably be trying to get back into the swing of blogging a bit more than I have been lately.

Cliff's Notes SOTU

2007-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

After pissing on our heads for 6 years, George W. Bush asks for another chance to convince us it's raining.

The Definitive Guide

2006-12-11T21:57:00.001-08:00

So I've been concerned. Worried you might say. My iTunes library (and other files too, just so you know) have been living life out on the edge. I, along with pretty much everyone else on the face of the internets, don't practice regular backups. With DVDs holding only a bit over 4 Gig and affordable drives going over 500, backing up is a huge pain. It's been my plan for a while now, to get one step closer to backing up my data. The major risk at Casa Hank (besides the Big One hitting the San Andreas, of course) is the loss of a drive.

If you've been reading your Slashdot, etc, you'll know that you can protect yourself from drive failure by setting up a RAID1 system. RAID1 is where you have 2 (or more perhaps) drives of identical size and they have the identical data on them. So if one fails you can pull it out, put a new one in and re-build the image. This, it needs to be repeated, is not a back up. If the Big One does hit, both drives are probably toast.

So I set one up. CompUSA had the right price on Maxtor 500 Gig drives and I got myself a pair of them. Then I got a nice dual-drive Firewire enclosure and set up the RAID1.

iTunes has a cool feature in the Advanced menu item: Consolidate Library... If you set the library location to a particular folder (say, one on your new RAID1 drive) and select Consolidate Library... it will copy every song from its old location to its new home in the new folder. Or at least it's supposed to. I think (WARNING! I'm making this part up) that writing to RAID1 drives is slower than writing to a single drive, and that iTunes expects things to happen at a particular rate and if they don't then there is a problem. iTunes refused to copy more than about 10% of the library to the new drive no matter how I begged and pleaded.

One solution to this problem is to copy everything by hand and then rebuild the library. This would work great except that I would lose all my metadata (play counts, ratings, etc) and I didn't want that to happen.

In my day-job I write Python code and one of the super-cool things available for Python on the Mac is a module called Appscript. It allows the Programmer to send AppleScript commands to programs via Python. My next idea was to copy everything over by hand and then use Appscript to programmatically set the location attribute of each song to its new home. Alas! The location attribute of the file_track is read-only. Dang.

But then, prompted by a comment on the MacPython mailing list and heartened by some Google results, I hit upon Hank's Foolproof Library Migration Scheme^tm:

Copy all the songs over to the new drive (one way to do this if some songs are already there because of a failed attempt at Consolidation is to open the terminal and type cp -R -n -p /Volumes/oldDrive/path/components/iTunes/ /Volumes/RAID/iTunes/) Note in the parenthetical command that the file structure is going to be the same from iTunes/ on down; this is critical to HFLMS.
Now copy the iTunes Music Library.xml file to some happy place.
Edit this file using your favorite editor. I used vi in a terminal window.
Do a global substitution of oldDrive/path/component to RAID. This will have the effect of changing the location attribute of every song to the new drive. (in vi you can type :1,$s/oldDrive\/path\/component/RAID/)
Save the file.
Now delete (or copy to a safe place) the iTunes Library file (this a binary version of the xml file you just finished editing).
Start up iTunes, select Import... and open the xml file you just finished editing. This will rebuild your library and iTunes will know how to find all your songs in their new home.

And that's all it takes.

Not the word I would use

2006-08-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

So I keep seeing news stories about the "Mormon Polygamist" getting busted. I have one question: why do they call him a polygamist? If you have sex with 13 year old girls, you are not a polygamist, you are a rapist.

Identity

2006-08-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

In which we find ourselves in a bit of getting-ready-for-bed conversation:

MLWN - YA, you really need to get your jammies on.

YA - <Studiously ignores Mom>

MLWN - YA, does Daddy need to open up a Can of Whup Ass?

YA - I am not a can.

Spam Spam Spam and More Spam!

2006-08-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

The hidden (from my selfish perspective) advantage of the increasing number of non-English speakers using the intarweb, is that if I get an e-mail that's in Chinese or Spanish or Russian, or whatever, I know it's really not for me.

Tell me how nice you are

2006-08-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

Last week the Clan Hank (Hank, MLWN, YW, YA, parents-in-law, brother-in-law and his wife (question: is the wife of my wife's brother my sister-in-law?) went to Molokai for a week of relaxation. When they say there's not a lot to do on Molokai, they are not lying. Part of the problem is that there are things to do, but you have to pay through the nose to actually do them. For example, at the Eastern end of the island is the lovely Halawa Falls. It's about 2 miles from the road, but to get there you have to transit a piece of private land. The farmer whose land is crossed wants some money. This shakes out as the requirement to hire a 'guide' to walk with you up the trail to the falls at $75 per head. That's pretty damn pricy for a walk that takes at most a few hours. A few years ago we went to the Big Island and Maui, they also have their fair share of super expensive activities, but there are places to go and things to do that, at most, cost a few bucks for entrance. Molokai has none of those. You either sit on the beach and have fun splashing in the waves or you pay a ton of money for all your fun.

We sat on the beach and by the pool and it was good.

Pictures to follow.

But back to the title. Molokai-ians are pleased to refer to their island as the "Friendly Isle". This reminds of a place where I used to live; Minnesotans refer to themselves as being "Minnesota Nice". Since this is a blog and wild generalities are what we're here for, I will use two points to make a line and present you with Hank's Law of Niceness: If the people in a particular place take pains to tell you how nice/friendly they are, they aren't. In general, the people on Molokai seem to not like the people who come to their island. The predominant attitude is one of annoyance at the tourists' presence. For example, I saw multiple "Welcome to Molokai, now go home" bumper stickers and signs in places where you'd expect to find tourists. Now don't mistake me. It's just fine to hate tourists. I've been known to partake of that myself. I can even understand why they feel that way: Molokai is very rural. I think the population of the entire island is about 7000 people. Try sending a constant flow of tourists to any isolated town of 7000 people in random America and the locals will probably be a bit short tempered. Just don't tell me how friendly you are while you're in the middle of all the hating.

Kid Blogging

2006-07-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a snap of the Boys at The Ditch. Having recently started a real job as an employee I have about 1 day of accrued vacation. MLWN having worked at the same place for quite some time has a couple months of accrued vacation. She needed a vacation, so she and the boys and her parents rendezvoused in Las Vegas, rented a minivan and did a 1400 mile loop around the Colorado Plateau while I stayed back on the Peninsula and worked while living vicariously through intermittent cell phone conversations. Their first stop after leaving Vegas was The Grand Canyon. Have you been there? It's great. You should go. They made it as far as Arches National Monument. Have you been there? You should go. It's great. In between they saw some dinosaur footprints (outside Cameron) and Capitol Reef and Bryce and Zion and Monument Valley and Hoover Dam (not in that order).

Still Losing? Yup.

2006-07-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys. It's been a while. Having an actual paying job has been kind of distracting. But my browsing of the USMC Image Archive has driven me to come out of seclusion.

The above picture is another example of why we have exactly zero chance of achieving a positive outcome in Iraq. Look at the picture. Look at it. It's a memorial to two unfortunate Seabees who died in Iraq. Their friends wanted to do something in their honor; that is admirable. But think for a second about the form of their memorial. They've made a cross (small reminder, a Christian symbol) and they've placed it under some re-bar that's going to be part of a newly constructed bit of roadway (small reminder, this roadway is in Iraq, not a Christian country. In fact, a Muslim country). Large numbers of Iraqis think we're a Crusading Army come back to the Middle East to convert them all to Christianity (or something like that). Driving around the countryside scattering symbols of the oppressor's religion around just can't be a good way to win friends and influence people.

And since it has been such a very long time since I've posted, I will ask Hank's Question: How many Iraqis do we have to kill before the survivors will be our friends?
Update: Just to clarify, I think it's great that the friends of these two Seabees memorialized them. My problem is with a command structure that allows for things that will, without a doubt, further antagonize the Iraqis. Make a cross as a remembrance of fallen friends: great. Bury that cross in a Muslim country where the population already thinks you're the return of the Crusades: not a great idea, but an understandable urge as TFA says the crater was made by the IED that killed the two men. Whoever in a position of authority let them do it and whoever vetted this picture and let it get posted on the official USMC website: dangerously incompetent.

YouTube Test

2006-05-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Here's an attempt to link to a video of YW waiting for his swimming lesson to start.

Kid Blogging

2006-04-11T22:10:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Time to celebrate fertility! Bunnies! Eggs! Spring! And dead guys popping out of holes in the ground to see if Winter's going to last for another 6 weeks.

I think I might have my holidays mixed up.

You're Kidding, Aren't You?

2006-04-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

So, for reasons that I won't go into, it became important to me today to be able to parse, using JavaScript in a browser window, the contents of a file specified by the User in a <input type = "file" name = "fileThingee" size = "40"> tag. For complicated reasons I couldn't do the super-bitchen AJAX thing and send the file to the server, get the info I wanted and send back the info. In a sane world what I wanted to do should be impossible. Well that might be a bit extreme. JavaScript shouldn't be able to open up and read an arbitrary file in the local file system. I can make the argument that if the User has selected a file for upload to a server then S/He has given up any expectation of file privacy, but I digress.

As the interweb is currently arranged it is almost impossible to do what I want to do. But if you're running Windows and Internet Explorer, it can be done. You have to use an ActiveXObject and do something like this:

var fname = "theFileName.txt";
var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var theFile = fso.OpenTextFile(fname, 1, true);
var fileContents = theFile.readAll();

Once you've done that you can, behind the User's back do the AJAX thing and send the contents of the file to the server from which the page was accessed. There are other methods that will open binary files.

To reiterate, if I can guess the name of a file on your system, if you're running Windows and use IE to access a page on my webserver, I can, if you have JavaScript turned on, slurp the contents of said guessed file up onto my system and the only way you'll know it happened is if you have a packet sniffer running on your internets connection.

That's fucking insane.

You Heard It Here First

2006-04-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

If Bush goes ahead with the threat to bomb Iran out of its Nuclear Ambitions this is what will happen: Iran will stage a conventional invasion of Iraq while the Shiite insurgents (who, by the way, haven't been nearly the pain in the ass to Americans that the Sunnis have) will go wild targeting American troops.

We will then be in a World of Shit. In an even shooting match (or even a lopsided one for that matter) the American Army can slaughter the Iranian Army. But. But American forces are currently scattered all over Iraq trying to keep the lid on the insurgency. If the Shiites make it difficult to move units around, the Army will be unable to concentrate to fight a conventional enemy and the various battalions will be mopped up piecemeal by Divisions of Iranians. And that will be that.

My Lil Softy

2006-04-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

On Friday we let the boys pick out movies to rent. YA went for Bambi II (I just have to mention that I loathe Disney sequels. When was the last time Disney made anything with a 2 at the end that was any good? Or even looks like they were trying to make something good?) and YW really wanted to get King Kong. I let them have their way. We watched King Kong up to the point where MLWN was too disgusted to continue (that would be the cave of giant bugs that want to eat people (while we're on the topic, what is it with the animals on Skull Island? They really love to try to kill people. The raptors going after the apatasaurs (or whatever long-necked variety they were supposed to be, ran past mounds of quivering meat in order to bite the crunchy, virtually meat-free humans. That makes no sense)). Last night we skipped that portion and continued with the movie (yet another digression, the boys went to a birthday party at a Rock Climbing Gym yesterday. YA wore himself to such a frazzle that he went to sleep around 5 and woke up at 6:30 this morning, so he missed the end of KK). At the end of the movie, YW was wailing and had to sit in MLWN's lap for a while to calm down. He was devestated that Kong died. And he knew it was going to happen.

I guess if you can get past the fact that Kong is a fearsomely dangerous animal that kills humans without even really thinking about it, it is kind of sad that he gets gunned down.

Kid Blogging

2006-04-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

I haven't done Kid Blogging in a while and the last one I did was of YW, so here's YA on a hike we did a couple weeks ago near Mori Point. Mori Point, for you Harold and Maude fans out there, is where Harold drives the Jaguar off the cliff at the end of the movie. YA has his binoculars because we stopped to gaze out to sea for a while to see if we could see any whales swimming by. We didn't. We did see a couple container ships on their way into the Bay, but that's all.

Still Losing? Yup.

2006-03-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

Hi -

Sorry for the long absence. I found a temporary gig doing contracting work at local biotech and it has really eaten into my screw around at the computer time. And the kids, so demanding.

But anyway, I'm going to attempt to redo a post that I wrote the other day right before it got eaten by Blogger.

This post is the latest in my recurring post theme: are we still losing in Iraq?. Previous episodes included a lovely post on a tank named "New Testament" driving down a road in Iraq and another about a clerk who was serving in a Provisional Rifle Company. I get these pictures from the USMC Image Archive. This website features pictures taken by regular everyday Marines that are then posted on an official usmc.mil page. So it's a strange combination of mundane and right up there in the middle of the action pictures. Today's picture is this:

Caption:
Lisa White works on rebuilding an AAV on the assembly line at MCA. Hundreds of the Marine Corps’ most valuable vehicle are getting rebuilt to extend their life cycles.
Photo by: Pat Fisher

But, internets, I can hear you asking, "Why does this mean we're losing, Hank?" It's quite simple really. The AAV (Amphibious Assault Vehicle) is what the Marines use to get infantry from ships out at sea onto beaches when it's time to do the D-Day thing. After the Marines secure the beach the idea is that other forces more set up for continuous campaigning on land will take over and continue with the ass whipping of the bad guys. So, an AAV is not designed to drive around on dry land for long periods of time. What we're doing in Iraq right now is destroying the ability of the Marines to do their primary job (to the point where their swimming armored vehicles have to be stripped down to bare hulls and entirely rebuilt) by having them fight a pointless war.

To reiterate Hank's Query: How many Iraqis do we have to kill before the survivors will be our friends?

Still Losing? Yup.

More Toothlessness

2006-03-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

So, as you can see in the picture below, YW lost his first tooth on Friday due to a wild elbow dislodging his already very loose upper incisor. The Tooth Fairy came through with 5 Golden Dollars. Much happiness and proudness at tooth redemption for money. Fast forward to Sunday. YW is sitting on the toilet pondering, as is his wont. In addition he is fidgeting with his remaining upper incisor which is also quite loose. He wiggles it. He tugs it. He wiggles it some more. He tugs a bit harder. He wiggles again. He tugs some more. Pop! Out it comes. Now it was pretty quiet in the bathroom; not at all like the rough and tumble of the schoolyard. I'll bet he heard it let go of his gum. He came completely unglued. MLWN and I were cleaning up in the ol' home-office when YW appeared, pants around his ankles, tooth in his hand, wailing. We tried to explain that it was OK that he lost another tooth; that it was actually pretty cool to have the Tooth Fairy come twice in one weekend. But he was having none of it and moped around all day.

It turned out that his big fear was that the kids at school would see that he was short two teeth and tease him. After school reports were that nobody noticed and he skated through the day sans teasing.

PS - The Tooth Fairy only brings $5 for the first tooth. After the first the price goes down to $2 (in Golden form, of course).

Kid Blogging

2006-03-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

YW lost his first tooth yesterday. And not in the way he anticipated. The tooth was ready to go; it was waving in the breeze, but hadn't yet succumbed. During recess at school one of his classmates, in what is reported to have been a complete accident, delivered an elbow to YW's mouth. Out came the tooth, a certain amount of blood, and some tears. YW at first thought he had swallowed the tooth, but the teacher in charge of the recess organized a search party and the errant incisor was located.

This morning YW discovered that the Tooth Fairy left him 5 (five!) Golden Dollars!

Visited States

2006-03-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

create your own visited states

OK, so I guess I haven't seen much of the South.

Conversation

2006-03-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

Here's the scene: I'm driving the boys to our favorite Japanese restaurant where we will meet MLWN and consume raw fish, etc. And are discussing how sometimes YA mispronounces various Fast Food names.

H - That's right, YA says Big Donalds instead of McDonalds. Do you want to know what I used to call Burger King when I was your age?
YW - Yes!
H - Booger King.
YW - Booger King?!?!
H - That's right, Booger.
YW, YA - Booger King! <much laughter />
YW - What did your sister call it?
H - I don't remember.
YA - My baby sister says...
YW - We don't have a sister, YA.
YA - We're going to buy one and she's going to say...
YW - You don't buy babies; you get them
YA - We're going to buy a baby sister that talks.
YW - YA, you don't buy babies, you get them from your mother.
YA - And she's going to say...

Conversation was here interrupted by our arrival at the place of yummy food.

Why God? Why?

2006-02-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

Why does Dick Button have the Olympics Figure Skating commentary gig? He either loves or hates each skater. And he (to a first approximation) hates them all. I just about booked a ticket to Italy so I could slap him around when he started complaining about one skater's shoe laces.

And just to go off on a tangent, if an event has judges, it is not a sport. It might be very difficult, it might be very competitive, but it is not a sport. You go faster or farther or score more points to win a sport. Having people watch you and then rate the quality of what you did doesn't belong in the Olympics. So no more figure skating, ice dancing, half-pipe, ski-jumping, gymnastics, etc. They are gone.

Please note that I'm not complaining about officiating, somebody needs to make sure the rules are obeyed. I don't like the panel deciding whose Flying 900 Reverse Smack Daddy Back Scratcher With A Twist was better than whose.

iTunes Annoyance

2006-02-24T15:36:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing. I really like iTunes. But it's got a bug that drives me wild.

Let's say you like to keep your library on a different drive than the one in the computer. No problem you go to the preferences and tell iTunes to store the songs in a different folder. Easy as pie. But. But if you get a song from the iTunes store it gets stored in the default location (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music) rather than directory you set in the preferences. And. And then after that if you rip a CD it puts the songs in the default folder just like it did with the purchased song. Sure you can do the Consolidate Library thing and after that it remembers to put songs in the right place, but it still makes me cranky.

Friday Kid Blogging On Thursday

2006-02-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'll be away from the computer tomorrow so I'm getting the Friday Formulaic Posts out of the way a day early. Here we see YW doing his Dr. Evil imitation. Or he's just been caught in the act of bringing a finger up to point out one of his 3 loose teeth. The Tooth Fairy has not yet made a visit to our house. I'm just not sure how much the TF brings these days. I've heard rumors that some kids in the neighborhood got $5 for their first tooth. I remember getting a quarter per tooth when I was a wee lad. Except for the tooth I lost when were down in San Felipe. Then I got a handful of Mexican change. The Mexican Tooth Fairy is/was very generous.

Friday Random 10 On Thursday

2006-02-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

Trash Heap - Superchunk
An Ode To Maybe - Third Eye Blind
Route 66 (The Nile Rodgers Mix) - Depeche Mode
Allegro vivace (Sonata No.2 in F, OP. 99) - Ofra Harnoy
Emenius Sleepus - Green Day
Happy Go Lucky Country - Browne Costello Grabowsky
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes - Midge Ure & Ultravox
Other Man - Wilson Diesel
St Tropez - Country Joe McDonald
Take It Easy - Travis Tritt

A Modest Proposal

2006-02-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

Here's my idea for how to deal with the "was Dick buzzed when he shot that man in the face?" concerns. Just assume he was. I now call on all news gathers and disseminators to ask Scott McClellan or anyone else in the administration to whom they happen to be talking, "Scott (or whoever) just how shit-faced was Deadeye when he shot that man in the face?"

Darn These Small Town Newspapers

2006-02-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here in Pacifica we have a newspaper: The Pacifica Tribune. It's published once a week. That's not so bad, not much news-worthy stuff happens on day-to-day. But when something that is news-worthy happens in the afternoon on a Tuesday (the paper comes out on Wednesday), then you have to wait a whole week to find anything out.

Last night on my way to pick up YW from daycare, I had to squeeze past a red VW beetle that was completely on fire in the right hand North-bound lane of Highway 1 (in a section of divided-by-concrete-barriers road). As I passed it I could see flashing lights of the fire engines trying to get through the back-up behind me. Careful examination as I went by showed nobody in the car, so I stifled my Good Samaritan instincts and kept on going. A few minutes later as I headed South on the way home with the boys, we saw the fire fighters putting the finishing touches on dousing the blaze.

So what's the story? I don't know because it was too minor to make the Chron and too late on Tuesday to make the Trib. Dang. Maybe it won't be such old news next week that it will make the paper.

How Cool Is That?

2006-02-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was checking my Sitemeter stats and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a referral from xnerg.blogspot.com. That's right, Hank has hit the big time and is on Skippy's blogroll.

I'd like to thank the academy, my agent, and most especially (since she's most likely the one who did it) Cookie Jill.

Just Can't Say It

2006-02-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

The Chron has an article, reprinted from the NY Times, about the avian flu outbreak in Nigeria. One of things they mention is that while about half the people who have contacted said flu from direct contact with infected birds have died, it has not yet been transmitted from person to person. But "scientists worry that it could acquire that ability through naturally occurring biological processes" which could set off a pandemic and kill lots of people.

They just couldn't say "scientists worry that it could evolve to acquire that ability." We wouldn't want to use the e-word. It might upset those readers who have an imaginary friend that doesn't like that word.

Friday Kid Blogging

2006-02-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

The other day we took the opportunity presented by sun in San Francisco to run up to the zoo. While waiting for MLWN to finish getting ready, YA struck a pose and said "Take my picture!" So I did.

Friday Random 10

2006-02-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

The Other Side - Salter Cane
Tough Girl - Open Hand
Ta Bueno Compadre (It's OK Friend) - The Texas Tornados
Seasons Of The Heart - John Denver
Scar - Fuel
You Ought To Be With Me - Al Green
Thats All Right - Jimmy Rogers
Can't Hold Out Much Longer - Little Walter
I Need Lunch - Dead Boys
My Babe - Clifton Chenier

Looking For Work...

2006-02-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

sucks. I heard from my latest interview that I didn't get the job. At this interview I was one of two final candidates and at my previous interview I was one of three. I got neither job. Dang. I did just apply for a job down in Santa Barbara. It's been open for a while. I hope that they just haven't found the right person yet rather than being too slothful to take the ad down from the website.

It would be OK to live in SB again. Who knows I might bump into the world-famous bloggers Cookie Jill (of Skippy The Bush Kangaroo) who seems to have moved back to town and TBogg (when he actually relocates there).

Update: I just got an automated response from the person in SB. She's at sea until Friday and I should consider sending a new e-mail after she's back so that my message is not lost in the clutter of accumulated-while-out-of-the-office e-mails.

What Is Our "Strategy For Victory"?

2006-02-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Internets, I've got a question for you:

What is this "Strategy For Victory" that our Fearful Leader keeps talking about? Because watching the news and reading the paper and, of course, reading you, internets, I get the impression that our strategy is to drive up and down the roads of Iraq looking for IEDs. Why, you ask, are the IEDs there? That would be because the US Army and Marines keep driving up and down the roads, so the insurgents put them there.

Perhaps the "Strategy For Victory" is to drive up and down the roads of Iraq until the insurgents have used up all the explosives they looted from the Iraqi Army's ammo dumps that were left unguarded for months after Blitz to Baghdad. Then the Army and Marines will be able to drive around and not get blown to pieces. Victory!

Friday Kid Blogging

2006-02-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

Early in the week YW's class had a field trip to 826 Valencia, which you'll be enchanted to find out is located at 826 Valencia in the City of San Francisco. I'm not exactly sure what you'd call the place. It's not a museum. It's not a school. It's kind of a performance art piece supported by field trips and a store that sells pirate-themed things.

When you go there on a field trip the class collaborates to produce the beginning and middle of a story. Then each child writes their own ending to the story and ends up with a book featuring their own version of the story. There are also a couple of pictures in the book that are drawn in real-time by one of the 826 Valencia people.

YW's class wrote a story about the pirate Yellowbeard and his parrot Perky. They find a skull-shaped island on which live a snowboarder named Ricky Hamslot and a snowman. Adventures ensue featuring avalanches and a search for buried treasure. It's all quite exciting.

The picture shows YW writing his version of the end of the story.

Friday Random 10

2006-02-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

Love Never Runs On Time - Paul Kelly
Wait No Longer - Joshua Redman Quartet
Summer Love - Frank Sinatra
Tangled Up In Blue - The Whitlams
Golden Years - David Bowie
Main Theme from Joe 90 - Barry Gray Orchestra
Moten Swing - Oscar Peterson Trio
Time - David Bowie
Baby Love - The Supremes
Bridges - Chris Bailey

Another Cheap Shot

2006-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

I'll stop comparing Dub And The Cronies to a certain ruling group in a Teutonic country when they stop imitating them.

During the Big War, Adolph Hitler didn't put Germany onto a Total War footing until 1943. Before that he wanted to be able to wage his wars of aggression without having too much impact on the home front. He talked a big game but he tried to fight a Guns And Butter war. Does that remind you of anyone?

What a Coward

2006-02-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

George Bush is without doubt the rankest coward in the US. Surrounded by his SS protectors he still didn't have the balls to be in the same room as Cindy Sheehan. A woman whose only crime is to have let her son be killed to feed the war fantasies of GW and his chicken-hawk ilk. She was in possession of a valid ticket and sitting down while wearing a t-shirt. For this she was arrested and ejected from the People's House.

"Sir! We have preserved the integrity of the bubble Sir!"

Friday Kid Blogging

2006-01-27T11:58:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we went over to a patch of reasonably flat territory to rollerblade and run around. Weeeee!

Friday Random 10

2006-01-27T11:57:00.000-08:00

Looks Like Mona Lisa (Smells Like Tuna Fish) - Michelle Shocked
Ice Heavy Branches - The Appleseed Cast
Petrushka: III La semaine grasse - Maxim Anikushin
New Year's Day - U2
I Wanna Be A Hippy - Technohead
Babylon - Crown Of Thorns
I Dreamed About Mama Last Night - Johnny Cash
A Little Bit of Your Loving Goes a Very Long Way - Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women
Blues For Monty - Joe Pass Quartet
Johnny Strikes Up The Band - Warren Zevon

Tet Anyone?

2006-01-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

The Chron has an article about US and Iraqi forces beating back insurgent attacks. As usual for such articles it's buried deep in the front section. But here's the thing. It's not about seeing bad guys planting a roadside mine or discovering a weapons cache. It's about US and Iraqi forces engaging in fire fights with insurgents. Why do I get the feeling we're nearing a Tet-like massive uprising? And yes I know that Tet was a military disaster for the VC, but it sure knocked the wind of the sails of the US war effort.

Pixar Movies To Start Sucking

2006-01-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Well I see that Pixar is going to sell itself to Disney. I guess that means that after Cars comes out (it's probably too far along for Disney to fuck it up) Pixar movies will begin to suck as much as the rest of Disney's animated movies do.

Twisty's Curry

2006-01-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

I decided to make the curry that Twisty wrote up the other day. It sounds too yummy and too easy to not make. Here it is in a slightly modified form.

Chopped Onion	Saute in butter until soft	Add spices and stir together	Add Chicken and brown slightly	Add tomatoes and simmer for about half and hour	Add yogurt and cashews, stir and bring warm over low heat
Garlic
Ginger
a certain amount of curry powder
some salt
a few pinches of cumin
a pinch of cayenne
chopped up chicken
canned chopped tomatoes to taste
plain yogurt
chopped toasted cashews

Garnish with toasted cashews and cilantro. Serve over rice.

Interview

2006-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

I had a job interview yesterday. One of the advantages of having worked at a company that has practiced multiple layoffs is that I now know people who work all over the Bay Area. One person asked me to send out the ol' resume and the next day I was contacted by the hiring manager and asked when I could come in for an interview. Now we just have to wait while the interview one other candidate for the position. Fingers crossed.

One entertaining thing about the group is that they are confirmed Mac-heads and the few people with Windows machines had to go out of their way to acquire them. If I get the job I should fit in pretty well... One of those MacBook Pros would be pretty nice.

Friday Ain't Got No Job Kid Blogging

2006-01-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

Here's YW part way through the below-described skating lesson. We just might go skating again this weekend so MLWN can skate too.

Friday Ain't Got No Job Random 10

2006-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

Money, Guns And Coffee - Pray For Rain
Reviews / Korg N364 - Future Music
Medley - James Brown
Armenia City In The Sky (Live) - Sugar
The Jerk - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) - Pavement
Good Time Music - Lovin' Spoonful
Tonyage - Descendents
Emily - Los Lobos
I Can't See Your Face In My Mind - The Doors

bin Laden Determined To Attack

2006-01-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

So I hear that Al Jazeera is playing an audio tape purporting to be of Osama Who threatening destruction in Europe and the US. El Presidente claims that he needs to break the law in order to protect all of us Americans. Well George here's your chance. If there are any attacks we'll know that even unfettered lawlessness on your part isn't enough for you to be able do your job.

Rule of Thumb

2006-01-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Here's another one of Hank's patented Parenting Methods^TM: The more that 7 year-old YW says he really doesn't want to do something, the more fun he is going to have when we do the actual activity. A classic is going to the zoo. "I don't want to go to the zoo! I hate the zoo. We always go there and it's no fun." Then he runs at full speed all over the place deciding which is the coolest animal that particular day.

The latest one was the ice skating party he went to on Saturday. He'd never been ice skating before so naturally he was just going to hate it. I convinced him that he should just take the half-hour lesson that was part of the party package. Then next week when MLWN is available for skating (she competed at figure skating in Jr high school and was bummed that she couldn't go to the party), he could go skating with her. He agreed. When we got to the rink he said he didn't even want to take the lesson. Paternal authority prevailed and he got some skates then he saw a couple of other party-attending friends of his and he dashed out onto the ice. When they shut down the rink an hour and a half later I managed to convince him that it was OK to take off his skates.

The best part of all this is that I've told him that the more he complains the more I think he's going to like whatever the focus of his complaints is. It just makes him complain more.

Friday Kid Blogging

2006-01-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a blast-from-the-past picture of the boys from March 2003. Just for reference, the sweatshirt YW is wearing has been handed down to YA and now fits him perfectly.

Friday Random 10

2006-01-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

Ice - Magic Dirt
Violent Love - Skankin' Pickle
Black Sheep - Killing Heidi
Esperando Por Ella - Oscar D'Leó
Precious Things - Tori Amos
A Good Soundtrack - The Aints
Do You Want Out - Mock Orange
It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) - Annie Ross & Gerry Mulligan
Seven Years - Cowboy Junkies
The Other Side Of The Coin - Solomon Burke

Finally

2006-01-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

YA (who just turned 4, thank you very much) is finally getting out of diapers and into underwear. YW was not potty trained when YA was born. I have been wiping someone else's ass for going on Seven And A Half Years. I'm ready to be in charge of only my own butt. The current stage we're in is that YA wears a pull-up during the night and underwear during the day. Until a couple of days ago, I was putting him in a fresh pull-up to get to preschool where his teacher (for whom he will do anything) would get him into his Mr Incredible underpants. Yesterday I decided that he had gotten good enough at holding his pee that he could almost certainly make it to school without detonating in the car. I told him that we were going to put his underpants on at home. This was not what he wanted to hear and he ramped up from upset all the way to full-on tantrum mode with the screaming and the kicking of the feet and everything.

Whereupon YA had the opportunity to be reminded of one of Hank's Rules Of Parenting: Tantrums don't work. You, as my child, will never never never never get your way if throw yourself a tantrum. I don't reward that behavior at all. My thinking is that if you give in even once, all you've done is show the kid what s/he has to do get something s/he really wants. I don't like dealing with tantrums enough to encourage them.

Let's Review

2006-01-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

Here are two things we know about Sam Alito:

He will lie when under oath (see his testimony about recusing himself from cases involving Vanguard).
He will lie to get a job (see his response to Sen Feinstein about his application for work with Reagan Administration).

So who gives a shit what he says in his Confirmation Hearing? Way back when I was on a jury we were instructed that if we decided that a particular witness had lied about anything we were allowed, actually encouraged, to disregard everything else the witness said. Sam Alito is liar who say will whatever people want to hear in order to get a job. He is not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Well Now We Know

2006-01-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

The Chron has an article about how it is becoming quite common to abort female fetuses in India. There are a couple of reasons for this: when your daughter gets married you have to pony up a dowry (ie, pay somebody to take your daughter off your hands) and parents are looked after in their old age by a son. So from a selfish perspective it makes monetary sense to reduce the number of daughters you have. Nationwide, under the age of 6, there are 932 girls for every 1000 boys. In one area the ratio is 710 girls per 1000 boys.

This has been going on for a while in China too, with the added pressure of the 1 child per couple rule.

So, internets, I hear you saying, "So how does this effect me waaaaaay across the ocean in America?" Well, what do you think a society with more males than there are females of compatible age does? I'm thinking the next big land war is going to be between China and India and it's going to start in 15 to 20 years. Or, they'll get over their antagonism and form an alliance against some evil, oppressive third party. I wonder who that might be?

And in 10 years or so the dynamics of marriage in India will probably get much more interesting. I'm thinking that the dowry is about to go away.

Father of Boy #1: Dipak I'll let my son marry your miserable daughter if you give me <Large Number> rupees.
Father of Boy #2: Dipak I'll give you <Somewhat Smaller Number> rupees if you let me son marry your daughter.
Dipak (Father of Girl): FoB1 you can fuck off. Fob2 you've got yourself a deal as long as the wife and I move in with your son and my daughter when we retire.

The Zoo

2006-01-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Here are some snaps from our trip to the zoo. It may come as a shock, but we were not the only people at the zoo searching out Alex, Marty, Melman, Gloria, and the Penguins (The Skipper, Rico, Kowalski and The Private). A close look at the photos shows that there is motion in several; the rhino is so dark because it was wet from an extended frolic in its pool. Gloria (the hippo), was in a really bad mood. It kept doing the mouth gape/biting motion at the few people in the area.

Friday Kid Blogging

2006-01-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

Here are the Boys climbing on the panther sculpture in the entry area of the San Francisco Zoo. And for those of you who are interested, the time to go to the Zoo is in the winter in between storms. It was cloudy while we there, and it sprinkled a bit, but there was nobody there. I don't know if it was the lack of people or the break in the storm, but the animals were much more active than their usual trying-to-imitate-taxidermy lifestyles. I'll post a some animal snaps in a bit and you'll see.

Friday Random 10

2006-01-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

California Nervous Breakdown - Dave Derby
Pour les Accord - Mitsuko Uchida
Lucky (Rap) - Joni Mitchell
Children In Bloom - Counting Crows
Pride And Joy (Live) - Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
Strap Me In - The Cars
Hey Now! - Oasis
A Place In The World - Mary Chapin Carpenter
I'm In Love - Aretha Franklin
Mr. Smith - Nina Simone

Let's Review

2006-01-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

Our Fearful President has asserted the following:

He has the Right and Power to declare any US Citizen an Enemy Combatant.
He has the Right and Power to hold an Enemy Combatants in military jails without access to lawyerly advice.
He has the Right and Power to secretly monitor the communication of anyone in furtherance of the Great War On Terror.
Once you are in the custody of the Exectutive Branch he has the Right and Power to torture you if that will help the Great War On Terror.

Could someone please explain to me how this is not a recipe for setting up concentration camps of those opposed to his Divine Right?

To paraphrase Brad DeLong, I'll stop comparing them with Nazis when they stop acting like them.

I Dooooon't Waaaant toooo goooo tooo Schoooooooool!

2006-01-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

YA got used to the vacation schedule while we were celebrating The Holidays. Last night in an effort to lay the groundwork for this morning I asked him if he was excited about going to school the next day. "No. I don't want to go to school tomorrow." This morning I every time I reminded him that he was going to go to school he got all teary-eyed. By the time we pulled up in front of his preschool he was wailing and had to be carried into the building. "I dooooon't waaaant toooo goooo tooo schoooooooool!" The thought of his teacher made him even more distraught. "I don't want to see Teacher Karen!" But when I had signed him in, put his lunch and nap gear away and had to go the only person who could make him feel better was TK. I left him wailing in her arms. I'd feel bad about my cruel abandonment of him except that I know he was happy as can be within 10 minutes of my departure. There is just too much fun at school to waste your time crying.

I See You!

2006-01-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

Recently a couple Friends of the Nuclear Family moved to other side of the country to become glamorous Professors at a Medical School in Virginia. This makes the whole face to face communication thing much more difficult. But! One of my Holiday Presents was an iSight Camera from Apple. That, my DSL connection and a free Jabber account allowed me to have a video conference conversation with them this morning. The video was a bit dodgy due to e-congestion between here and there but it worked. The only problem with the setup is that the lights in the room are behind me. I need to get one of those iLights so I can have an illuminated visage while v-conferencing.

Mixmania! The Holiday Mix!

2005-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

Being a bear of very little brain, I haven't figured out how to make Blogger post something later. So I'll twiddle the date and it will look in later years as if I actually obeyed Jim's directive and posted my playlist on Christmas Eve. Here, then, is my Mixmania! The Holiday Mix! playlist:

Halloween - Dead Kennedys
Thanksgiving In Reno - Too Much Joy
The Twelve Gifts Of Christmas - Allan Sherman
Christmas Blues - Big Joe Williams
Christmas Time - Bill Cosby
Merry Christmas Baby - Charles Brown
Christmas In The Caribbean - Jimmy Buffett
Father Christmas - The Kinks
Christmas Morning - Lyle Lovett
Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
The Night Before Christmas (Hey Baby) - The Rave-Ups
I'm Gonna Kill Myself For Christmas - Trout Fishing In America
Santa Claus And His Old Lady - Cheech & Chong
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
Son of Santa - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Santa's Beard - They Might Be Giants
Chanukah Song Pt 2 - Adam Sandler
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon
Christmas In Prison - John Prine
Jolly Old Christmas Time - Weddings, Parties, Anything
New Year's Eve - Nina Gordon
New Year's Day - U2
Happy New Year - Lightnin' Hopkins

Wednesday Kid Blogging

2005-12-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

This is actually a test to see if I can make a post appear at a later time. I'm supposed to post my Mixmania! The Holiday Mix playlist on Christmas Eve, but I'll be away from the computainment center and won't be able to actually do the typing that day. Here's hoping it works. I'm going to try to have it post today (12/21) at 0950.

Update:OK, so that didn't work. All it did was fake out the posted time, without actually delaying the post itself. Dang.

Here's The Thing...

2005-12-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

So here's the thing with the President Dumbass and the Illegal Spying and the push to reauthorize the PATRIOT act. Cast your mind back to October/November 2001. We were awash with news reports about how the Feds had enough separate bits of information in their hands to have arrested some of hijackers. Doing that would probably have uncovered most of the others. There was no shortage of information on which to base some vigorous police related program activities. The problem was that different parts of the government had different pieces of the puzzle and when underlings tried to make their bosses put things together the bosses didn't do anything (was her name Rowley?).

If we really want to fight terrorism (A debatable proposition for the current administration (Osama Who?)), then the last thing we need is even more worthless information decreasing the signal to noise ratio. We need people to act on the good information that pre-9/11 law is capable of producing.

Friday Random 10

2005-12-16T10:59:00.000-08:00

Bathtime/Hide And Seek Dumbo Soundtrack
Intro - I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me Keith Jarrett Trio
Walks The Streets Clorox Girls
Fourthly King Missile
Get Your Shit Together Beth Hart
One Of These Things First Nick Drake
Holiday In My Head Smash Mouth
Grohg: Dance of the Opium-eater Cleveland Orchestra, Oliver Knussen
Born In The 50's The Police
I Got You Dwight Yoakam

Javascript Weirdness

2005-12-15T14:44:00.000-08:00

This a continuation of the Safari Weirdness post below. You'll no doubt recall that in Safari if you create a button from Javascript you get an ugly square thing that doesn't look anything like the cool buttons you get when you hard-code the button in the HTML. Well it gets even stranger after that. According to the AJAX book I've been using, the best way to attach a callback action to a button is like this:

var theButton = document.createElement("button");
theButton.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Click Here You Big Silly"));
theButton.onclick = function () { respondToTheClick() };

If you do that you get your button, assuming you remembered to add it to the DOM somewhere. But when you click on it. It just doesn't work. No matter what you do, the xmlHttp.status you get back when the server routine prints its output is always always always undefined. This makes no sense to me. If you look at the Javascript console in Firefox the error message starts with "Component returned failure code 0x80040111" with some other gobbledy gook after that. Safari just reports xmlHttp.status as undefined. Now here comes the weird part. If instead of creating your button on the fly, you hard code it into the HTML

<input type = "button" value = "Click Here You Silly" onClick = "respondToTheClick();">

(and since you obviously only want it available sometimes otherwise you wouldn't be wanting to create it on the fly in the first place) and put it in a div element that is set to display:none which you toggle to display:block when you want the User to see the button, the button works like a charm and the returned xmlHttp.status is 200 just like you want it to be. Weeeeee!

That was a large part of yesterday morning. Googling the Firefox error message fragment I quoted just gets you a bunch of people saying "hmm... it's a bug in Firefox. Maybe they'll fix it soon."

So there you go AJAX people, use hardcoded buttons and hide them until you need them.

Snort

2005-12-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

I was channel surfing last night. Yeah, I know, big surprise. At Chez Hank we don't have the digital cable. We have your old school basic cable. On some stations even with our antedeluvian connection, there is some text shown over the top of the picture informing the viewer what s/he is viewing. Something like "CSI" or "Everybody Loves Raymond". After a few seconds the text goes away and you can see the whole picture again. Last night as I was breezing past the Hallmark channel (all saccharine, all the time) I noticed the following show title in the text box: A Boyfriend For Christ.

Still Losing? Yup.

2005-12-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here's the caption from a photo on one of the web sites I regularly visit:

Lance Cpl. Jeremiah K. Barr of King, N.C., a fiscal clerk currently serving his country with Quick Reaction Force, Provisional Rifle Company, Headquarters and Service Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), sings and plays the guitar here during his spare time.

For those of you wondering, the web site is United States Marine Corps Image Archive. It is a site that shows pictures taken and submitted by Marines to document what it's like being a Marine. But if you check the URL it's a usmc.mil address, so the pictures are approved by someone official before they get onto the site.

So why is this caption an indication that we're losing in Iraq? Well I'm glad you asked, Internets. Check out to what unit our friend fiscal clerk Lance Corporal Barr belongs. That's right it's the Quick Reaction Force, Provisional Rifle Company. The operative items are 'fiscal clerk' and 'Provisional'. That means that Lance Corporal Barr is supposed to spend most of his time in some HQ unit driving Excel spreadsheets. But instead of doing that he is assigned to a Provisional Rifle Company. A Provisional Rifle company is what you get when you're running short of infantry and you round up clerks and cooks and truck drivers and form them into a temporary (dare we say Provisional?) infantry unit. Now I admit that every Marine is a rifleman, it's part of their mythos, but giving fiscal clerks rifles is not the action of a military that is on the upswing in their operations.

Safari Weirdness

2005-12-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

Here we see two buttons rendered in a Safari (that would be Apple's Browser for those of you not in the know) window. The one on the left was generated via regular HTML

<input type = "button" value = "Get Sample Info" onClick = "doGetSampleInfo();">

The one on the right was generated using Javascript manipulation of the DOM

var button = document.createElement("button")
button.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Edit Sample"))
sampleDiv.appendChild(button);

Do you notice anything strange about the pair of them? That's right, the first is a pretty Aqua button like you expect to see in Safari. The second is an ugly rectangle that looks goofy next to its sibling button. Firefox uses only ugly buttons so they match in that browser. Opera is smart enough to use the pretty button in both cases. C'mon Apple get with the program.

Oh and you could also notice that the text on the pretty button is set via

value = "Get Sample Info"

inside the button tag. The text on the Javascript-generated button is set something like this:

<button>Edit Sample</button>

If you try

button.setAttribute("value", "Edit Sample");

button.value = "Edit Sample";

which seem like they should generate the same DOM entry as the vanilla HTML, you get a miniscule button with no text. Why is that internets?

Look! I'm being oppressed!

2005-12-12T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Chron has an article about how some CHRISTian school is suing the University of California because the CHRIST-centered education that the students receive does not meet the criteria for acceptance at the UC. The CHRISTians feel that they are being discriminated against and that the UC is dictating their curriculum. The UC's response is that they can learn any damn thing they want at their CHRISTian school, but if they want to go to the UC they should meet the standards of the UC.

Here's the amazing part: the suit isn't about biology. The actual bones in contention are a humanities classes. I was completely unaware that the CHRISTian view of literature is fucked up too.

Friday Kid Blogging

2005-12-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

YA loves him some oatmeal.

Friday Random 10

2005-12-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

Dancing Barefoot U2
Walked Thin Wires Ed Kuepper
Mary's A Grand Old Name Glenn Miller
Summertime Janis Joplin
Let's Do It Eartha Kitt
White Light / White Heat The Velvet Underground
Babelogue Patti Smith
The Hypnotist Cross My Heart
Alarm Call Björk
Hell Of A Hat The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Meme

2005-12-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

I got tagged by Jim over at Patriside: List 5 things that people may not know about you and tag 5 people to do the same. I'm going to blow off the tagging part since I don't actually have 5 regular readers, but if you really want to do it feel free.

I'm a really good cook. I'm no chef, but I can follow a recipe and for certain categories of food (eg, bread) I can start with an idea of what I want and make said thing without reference to a recipe.
I voted for Ronald Reagan. What can I say, in my misspent youth I was a nasty little bastard. I'm over that now.
I like guns and the shooting thereof. It may cast doubt on my Yellow Dog Democrat cred, but I can't get behind much gun control.
I was recently given advance notice that the money for my job at UC Santa Cruz runs out as of January 20. To rephrase, I've been laid off.
When I was just a lad my mom wanted to encourage any musical talents I might have and so signed me up for accordian lessons. So for a while there in early 70's San Diego little Hank was a Polka machine. To this day I have a soft spot for any type of music that includes accordians.

Sunday Kid Bloggging

2005-12-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday YW went to a birthday party at a wall-climbing gym. It was his first birthday party where I was required to sign a waiver of liability. Luckily for everyone involved there was no plummeting to their deaths. And for those of you paying attention who noted that he is not roped in, he's in the warm-up area of the gym and is about 2 feet off the extremely padded floor. He did, while roped in, climb about 40 feet up and touch the ceiling later in the party.

Friday Random 10

2005-12-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

They Don't Dance Like Carmen No More Jimmy Buffett
Mile End Pulp
You're Kind Paul Simon
Baby's Got The Car Keys Trout Fishing In America
I Can't Give You Anything But Love Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
Wide Open Road Weddings, Parties, Anything
Dollars & Cents Radiohead
Don't Hold Back That Feeling Andrew Pendlebury
Blinded By Rainbows The Rolling Stones
The Ballad Of Tom Jones Space With Cerys Of Catatonia

Baptism

2005-11-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a post over at Laid Off Dad, I will now relate the story of how YW didn't get baptized.

YW was born in Minnesota, my ancestral homeland. This meant we took him out to see my Grandmother quite a few times before we moved back to California. At one of the early visits the following conversation occurred:

Granny - Have you had YW baptized?
H - No.
G - Do you know that you are endangering his immortal soul?
H - Well when he's old enough he can decide for himself if he wants to be baptized.

What I thought, but didn't say (since I didn't want Granny to drop dead on the spot) was, "Any God that would send a baby to Hell because the baby isn't baptized is not the sort of God whose ass I wish to kiss."

Happy Violation Day!

2005-11-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

Being a Dad of a certain age (that would be greater than 40), going to the doctor for a physical is a bit more exciting than it used to be. "OK, roll over on your side... pressure... pressure... there, all done." At least this time I knew what to expect. Way back when Hank was just a Hankling (14 to be exact), I had an inflamed appendix. Said appendix needed to come out. And it was so, but one of the preliminaries to the whole get-cut-open-and-have-part-of-your-innards-removed process is a rectal exam. I was a pretty naive 14 year old and said exam was initiated without much explanation. It was most surprising.

And yay for me, I am, it seems, in reasonable health. Pending of course the results of the blood work.

PS - the Blogger spell-checker wanted to replace 'rectal' with 'recital'.

It's a Penguin!

2005-11-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

Today we trekked down to one of the local Malls (Hillsdale in Burlingame for those of you following along at home). We wandered, we had lunch, we did not buy anything. While there we encountered the Have Your Picture Taken With Santa booth. Next to it was a young man with an unenviable job. He was making balloon animals for anyone who wanted one (paid by the Mall, I assume as there was no charge and he wouldn't accept tips). He was quite talented, but in order to keep the queue from reaching infinite length, he was working at super high speed. He was flushed, his hands were shaking. But he did manage to have a pleasant chat with each child as he was making their flower, motorcycle, flower, whatever. YA elected to have a penguin.

Zombies! Zombies! Aieeeeeee!

2005-11-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

So I get my connection to the Internets from SBC (or as they want to be called now, ATT) and my e-mail from the affiliated Yahoo. Now usually very little spam makes it to my e-mail program. I guess the combo of SBC/ATT and Yahoo are able to find the blatently bad stuff and get rid of it before it ever reaches me. But the last few days either there is some monster evil zombie network that recently came online that is trying to take over my computer (it's a Mac, eat shit Windows-zombie scum!) or SBC/ATT and Yahoo have eased the rules on their big filters. I've been getting a several your-email-bounced-please-open-the-enclosed-zip-file messages per hour since late last week.

It Wasn't Me

2005-11-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

Michael Bérubé has called on all of Blogtopia (Y!SITP!) to reveal whether or not they are the source of Bob Woodward's information on the work habits of Valerie Wilson (nee Plame). Because I am interested in the furthering of Justice and the elucidation of Truth, let me here state that it was not me. At the time I was busy trying to Cure Cancer and make the world a Better Place through my efforts at a medium sized Biotech company. (Have heard the definition of a Biotech company? It's a pharmaceutical company with no products).

Friday Kid Blogging

2005-11-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

Wow. Look at me, I remember to do FRT and FKB on Friday itself. I am so impressed with me.

Last weekend the boys attended a Birthday Party at our local Bowling Emporium. There was cake. And the smearing thereof.

Friday Random 10

2005-11-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

Mommy's Little Monster Social Distortion
Born To Lose Social Distortion
Mother And Child Reunion Paul Simon
Overture To "Candide": Allegro molto con brio Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein
Working Undercover For The Man They Might Be Giants
Miracle To Me The Black Crowes
Tiger Fight Disney The Jungle Book
All Night Long Jerry Lee Lewis
The Three Drovers Sydney Philharmonia Motet Choir, Antony Walker
Jesus Took Possession Over Judgement Day Chris Wilson

Pray for snow

2005-11-16T15:48:00.000-08:00

Last summer the Nuclear Family took a vacation trip up to Lake Tahoe. One of the things you can do if you're up at the North end of the lake is a self-guided float down the first 4 miles of the Mighty Truckee River (which, I assume you know, has Lake Tahoe as its head-waters). This stretch of river is so placid that they will let you take a 3 year old in the boat. That being said the water does from time to time get moving fast enough to be moderately exciting.

Digression: I met MLWN around Christmas time the winter after my last summer of guiding. She had been rafting before, but we had never before been in the same boat.

As we were riding the bus back to the put-in MLWN said, "Why don't we own one of those?" Well that seemed like a very good question, so since September I've been browsing the appropriate section of eBay (previous reconnaissance had shown that whitewater companies divest themselves of surplus boats in the fall). After a couple of false starts I finally had the high bid on a reasonable boat and now I'm the proud owner of a 13' Riken Pioneer. Woot! Now all I need is all the equipment that goes along with the rubber itself: paddles, PFDs, a hand-pump, various ropes, etc.

Your task, internets, is to pray for a good snow pack in the Sierras this winter so Hank and Family can have big fun floating down Northern California's scenic rivers next summer. Thanks.

And don't forget to be careful when you're out on the water.

It's a bunch of small worlds

2005-11-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend MLWN and I had 3 almost-but-not-quite small world encounters.

The mother of one of YW's classmates went to UCSB at the same time I did, but we had never encountered one another while at school.
The mother of one of the boys on YW's soccer team was a whitewater guide on the American River (working for ARTA) at the same time I was guiding on that river while working for OARS, but we never met while we were Bitchen Whitewater Guides.
The father of that same kid attended a short-lived military-themed prep school in Santa Barbara at the same time as the high school version of MLWN was hanging out with guys who went to said school, but they had never met at the time.

All in all, not too profound, but kind of groovy.

For a real small world story, I'll give you this.

The first week of Freshman year at UCSB I ran into the girl I sat behind in 8th Grade Geography class when we were in Jr High in Rockville, Maryland. I had moved to Wisconsin after the 9th grade and then to LA after my Junior year of high school. She had moved from Maryland straight to California after Sophomore year.

Monday End of the Season Soccer Blogging

2005-11-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

Saturday was YW's last soccer game of the season. Since we weren't keeping score we have no need to note that the Stingers got shelled something like 4-nil. But it was a nicely muddy field so everybody got really dirty.

And since it was the last game of the season we had to have the End of the Season Pizza Party at a local pizza establishment. And as the coach it was obviously my duty to make a soccer ball cake. This task was made easier by the BettyCrockerBakeAndFill cake pan system being a part of our kitchen establishment (and listening to YW say it, it is one long word). For months whenever an ad for BKBnF would come on the TV (you have to watch the right channels for that to happen. Luckily we watch a lot of Nickolodeon and Cartoon Network), YW would write the 800 number down on a piece of paper and tell me that I absolutely had to call and order that fabulous product. Finally, around his Birthday I gave in. One of the pans that comes with the BKBnF cake pan system is a hemisphere which allows the cook (that would be me) to make cakes that look like a ball (well, part of a ball anyway).

Gameboys are like beating off

2005-11-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

So YW went on his first sleep-over on Saturday. A subset of the boys invited to a Sunday Birthday Party were invited to sleep over at the Birthday Boy's house on Saturday night. It was going to be huge fun. And YW reported it as being fun. Until, that is, last night, when it came out that the other boys had brought their Gameboys and there was a distinct lack of sharing with YW who not only didn't bring one, he doesn't even own one. There were tears. Reading between the lines of what he said, I think the situation lies somewhere between YW not asking for a turn to play a game and the other boys telling him to piss off when he asked for a turn. I think there might have been a couple of requests after nobody spontaneously offered to let him play.

But be that as it may, on further reflection it seems to me that playing a Gameboy (or PSP or whatever) is like masturbating. It's kind of fun, it doesn't hurt anyone else, but you really shouldn't do it in a roomful of people. And a whole bunch of people playing their Gameboys in the same room is just a asking for a mess.

And yes, we're going to cave. He'll probably get one for Christmas. But there will be limited opportunities to play it and for damn sure he won't be taking to over to friends' houses when he's supposed to be interacting with other humans.

Thursday Kid Blogging

2005-11-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

I've been slacking off on FKB lately and I'm unlikely to get to it tomorrow, what with it being Armistice Day and all, so here it is a day early.

Ever since YW could walk I've thought it would be cool to dress him up as a Jawa. He's finally enough into Star Wars for the idea to have appealed to him. And, naturally, if YW is being a Jawa, YA had to be a Jawa too. The robes were made by our neighbor who is the Queen of the Sewing Room. I made the R2D2-blasting guns out of a couple dollars of PVC pipe and fittings and some black spray paint. The only thing I wasn't able to come up with were glowing eyes. But they still looked pretty cool.

Did you vote?

2005-11-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping that all my California-residing readers (both of you), have gone out and voted. And if not, will do so before the polls close. And if I may be so bold, may I suggest following Hank's Initiative Voting Algorithm? If you are new to this site, or don't remember, it can be most easily stated as: Always Vote No.

YW, it's time to go!

2005-11-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

Time for a daddy post on what is supposed to be at least a bit of a daddy blog.

Getting YW out the door for school in the morning has been a bit of a challenge lately. He likes to get out of bed and then lie down on the couch until the threat level has reached a high enough pitch to get him moving to the breakfast table or to his room to pick out his clothes. Monday was particularly stressful for everyone involved. There were tears and lamentations.

When I picked him up on Monday I asked if he liked being yelled at in the morning. In his opinion it was not the best of all possible worlds. I informed him that I didn't like yelling at him myself. Then I told him my new plan:

The next day (and all school days after that) I planned to wake him up at his regular time. I would then inform him of the time remaining before departure. At intervals I would tell him of the time remaining. At departure time he goes to the car. If he wanted to lie on the couch and go to school with no breakfast and wearing his pajamas that was just fine with me. The thrust of the plan being that he is in charge of himself and that I didn't want to yell in the morning anymore.

He got all big-eyed at the thought of going to school in his pajamas (or naked, I mentioned that possibility as well). We've have executed this plan every day for the remainder of the week and it has worked like a charm. He's been ready to go: fast broken, dressed, teeth brushed, backpack packed at least 15 minutes before departure time every day. I like the new morning routine a lot. But in the back of my mind I think that eventually he's going to backslide and I'll have to pull the trigger on heading out to the car in whatever state he happens to be.

It's Started

2005-11-02T16:31:00.000-08:00

The Chron had an article about a soldier going on trial for fragging a couple of officers. For those of you not in the know, fragging means the not-officially-sanctioned killing of officers by enlisted men. It gained popularity in Vietnam where the men in the ranks didn't appreciate being led by incompetents who wouldn't learn. After some undefined period of time an officer who was viewed as more dangerous than the enemy was likely to be the recipient of a grenade in his tent or (oops!) shot during a fire fight. So in this weeks demonstration that the current upleasantness is at least as bad as Vietnam, the fragging has begun. The article states that the man had a vendetta against one of the officers he (allegedly) killed. Now maybe it's just a run of the mill homicide, but vendetta is an awfully broad word.

Suspenders And Belt

2005-11-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

The Chron has been running a multi-day article on people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and what, if anything, should be done about it. Back in the mists of time, the original design of the bridge had a 5'6" barrier along the pedestrian walkway and there were plans for making sure that people were discouraged from jumping. But during the run-up to building the bridge the height of the railing was lowered to 4' and the high-intensity monitoring of the foot-borne traffic was cut back. So we currently have an average of at least one person a week going off the bridge.

The argument about making it harder to jump comes down to two points of view

People who want to die are going to find some way to off themselves, so why bother retrofitting the bridge. Besides it's so pretty and a suicide barrier would just ruin the aesthetic. The more subtle version of this argument is that if you go off the bridge you are must less likely to hurt a bystander than if you go off a building or throw yourself into traffic.
We're talking about human beings here. Humans that we should, perhaps, try to help. If we build some sort of barrier or net maybe we can get these people treatment and they won't want to die anymore. The subtle version of this argument is that, according to the first article in the series, in the population of would-be jumpers who were talked out of jumping less than 10% go on to find some other way to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Now I personally fall into camp number two. Letting people die because you don't want to alter the view is fucked up. But that's not why I'm writing this post.

In today's article they mentioned a woman who jumped off the bridge, gun in hand and shot herself in the head on the way down. Now that's making sure.

Always Vote NO

2005-10-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Chron has an article about an unanticipated consequence of the Stem Cell Initiative. It turns out that all those Billions and Billions of dollars California is sure to reap as a result of priming the Stem Cell Research Pump with the $3,000,000,000.00 from the initiative may not be available because of details in the Federal Tax Code. This is yet more proof that Hank's Initiative Voting Algorithm is the only proper way to decide how to vote.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hank's Initiative Voting Algorithm, it can be easily stated as Always Vote NO. Even good ideas like funding Stem Cell research have subtleties that aren't adequately addressed by the Petition then Vote way that initiatives work. If funding Stem Cell research is a good idea (and it is) the Legislature should do its job and properly research all the details and write a law that ensures the desired outcome. I'm really tired of having supposed good ideas turn out to be crap once they are already carved in stone.

Friday Random 10 On Saturday

2005-10-22T15:57:00.001-07:00

Goodbye Lucille #1 Prefab Sprout
Heart Broken Bopper The Guess Who
Elle Cosmic Psychos
Die Hard The Hunter Def Leppard
The 500 Club Steel Pole Bathtub
Strong Enough Sheryl Crow
Nobody's Fault But Mine Led Zeppelin
Get Out The Map Indigo Girls
Keep Young And Beautiful Annie Lennox
Waiting in Vain Bob Marley & The Wailers

Friday Kid Blogging On Saturday

2005-10-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

The other day we took the riding implements over to a flat patch of pavement near the house (we live on a pretty steep hill) and let the boys roll around for a while. Good fun was had by all.

LAST_INSERT_ID()

2005-10-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a CGI script that needs to write anywhere from a few to a few thousand entries into a few tables in a MySQL database. The fun part is that I'm tracking foreign keys between the tables (ie, tableA.id can be found in tableB.tableAId and tableB.id can be found in tableC.tableBId). So I need to know the last id value inserted into tableA or tableB before I can write into tableB or tableC. Luckily for us this can be obtained with the following query: "SELECT LAST_INDEX_ID() FROM tableA". This is supposed to give the last id value written into tableA.

When I was testing the performance of the page, it was inconceivable slow. The page was timing out before I could even write 20 values to the database. That's just weird. I thought it might be something to do with the way I was formatting my INSERT statement. But doing an INSERT by hand from the MySQL prompt showed that a typical INSERT from my CGI was about as fast as you would expect. So I tried retrieving the lastest id from tableA and it took a while. And was, in fact, returning a list of all the ids from tableA with the latest one as the first in the list. So a table with around 70,000 entries was returning a list of 70,000 numbers. This isn't, as far as I know, what is supposed to come back from that query. So in my usual kludgy style I changed it to "SELECT MAX(LAST_INDEX_ID()) FROM tableA" and that's really fast. Now the CGI is usable.

I should, in fairness mention that I'm using the MySQLdb module to connect to MySQL from Python. But even from the MySQL prompt itself I'm getting that behavior so I don't think it's a synergistic reaction between Python and MySQL.

I Saw One!

2005-10-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

When I pulled up to YW's After School Daycare today I saw a minivan sporting a Flying Spaghetti Monster decal. I was so excited I just might have to get one for myself.

Tamiflu Update

2005-10-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today's Chron has an article about how a Pharma company in India is going to manufacture Tamiflu (well to be precise, the chemical compound that Roche like to call Tamiflu).

Patents are strange thing. You have to describe the thing you are patenting sufficiently well that a person skilled in the appropriate arts can replicate your invention. Respect for law and a desire to avoid costly lawsuits are all that keep companies from making competing identical versions of everything that gets patented.

So yesterday Roche said that there was no way they would license people to make Tamiflu even with royalities for Roche built into the deal. Today we find that a company in India, a country which is not renowned for its respect for patents from other countries, is going to throw caution to the winds and start making Tamiflu, with no royalties for Roche. Oops.

And this isn't some fly-by-night meth lab in Madras. These guys make anti-retrovirals that are used all over the world. And they manufacture precursors for First World pharma companies. If they say they can make Tamiflu, I'll bet they can.

Friday Random 10

2005-10-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Save My Soul The Lime Spiders
All The King's Friends Soul Asylum
Mr. Brownstone Guns N' Roses
The 4 seasons; Winter Antonio Vivaldi
Backdoor Man The Doors
Fear Doe Montoya
I've Got A Feeling The Beatles
Just Trying To Be Jethro Tull
Incident On South Dowling Paul Kelly And The Messengers
Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine James Brown