Black Rock City

People do strange things. Groups of people do stranger things.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=40.7681267&lon=-119.2241478&z=14&l=0&m=h

Recorded Music

This is the second time I have heard complaints about the way the sound is processed before being recorded on a CD. Via Dustbury.com.

http://www.dustbury.com/backlog/2008/06/not_a_petty_issue.html

About email addresses

I ran across this on one of Google's help pages. Cleared up some things for me.


Sometimes you may receive a message intended for someone whose address resembles yours but has a different number or placement of dots. For example, your address might be homerjsimpson@gmail.com, but the message was sent to a Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com. What's going on?

Gmail allows only one registration for any given username. Once you sign up for a particular username, any dot or capitalization variations are made permanently unavailable for new registration. If you created yourusername@gmail.com, no one can ever register your.username@gmail.com, or Your.user.name@gmail.com. Furthermore, because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won't change the actual destination address.


Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com, and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours.

If you're homerjsimpson@gmail.com, no one owns Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, except for you. Sending mail to Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com is the same as sending mail to homerjsimpson@gmail.com, or even HOMERJSIMPSON@GMAIL.COM. If you're getting mail addressed to Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, most likely someone was trying to send a message to Homer.J.Sampson@gmail.com, or Homer.J.Simpson1@gmail.com, and made a mistake. You might even get messages from mailing lists or website registrations because the intended recipient accidentally provided the wrong email address. In these cases, we suggest contacting the original sender or website when possible to alert them to the mistake.

For security reasons, when you log in to Gmail, you must enter any dots that were originally defined as part of your username.

Note: Google Apps recognizes dots. If you'd like to receive mail with a dot in your username, please ask your domain administrator to add the desired username as a nickname.

Nashville Teens - Tobacco Road

I stumbled across this. I hadn't heard this song since I don't know when.

Batting Practice

Nephew Nick and brother Andy. And the shovel.

Idle

"A" sent the rest of us some links, which engendered a little chat:

A:
Idler
Idle Pleasures
Freedom-Manifesto-Government-Supermarkets-Melancholy

M: "The book gives tantalizing anthropological insights into society's views on those lazy habits that the author so enjoys, but the viewpoint is so antiquated and condescending toward the poor slobs who must actually go to work every day that readers will often find themselves staring aghast at the page."

A-ghast. Curious word. I should look that up someday, but just now I have a plate a cucumber sandwiches that seem to beckon me, arisen, as it were, they seem to have, from the very prettily starched tablecloth upen which they sit, cooled by the silver platter they occupy.

D: It occurs to me that M is the only one of us working a job right now...

C: Yes, and he is the only one with cucumber sandwiches.

D: Can maintaining a multi-media website, writing and publishing books, and promoting events really be considered "idle?" Isn't that a bit disingenuous? Like hunting whales, and donating the proceeds to "save the whales?"

C: Hmmm. If it's what you were going to do anyway and it turned out to make you some money, well maybe. If you are doing with the intent of turning a profit, well maybe not. There is idle, and there is bored. Even when I am idle, I need something to do.

M: Being truly idle includes not thinking about it.

A Love Song For Joyce

Poking around on the internet I came across this story by Ambulance Driver. It's a little over a year old, but it's still a heck of a good story.

Quiz

When life throws adversity at you, how do you determine whether it is:
A) A test of your fortitude and mental strength, which will result in reward;
B) A signal that you are pursuing the wrong path and should correct course?

Currently I can only do a sort of rudimentary cost-benefit, risk-reward analysis, and that is based on probablilities and expected outcomes which are fundementally unknowable. Unsatisfactory.

Submit your answers to enter a drawing for a free loaf of pumpernickel!

Dan

----- Answer ------

There is no future. There is only the now.

My college eduated son says the one true way is Monadology.

ccp

Wowzer

Good ol' Onion.

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Witch, witch!

After seeing this ad on TV, I have been using that phrase to denounce any clever approaches to program problem solving.



Mike

Flood

Dateline Iowa,

The TV news is running 24/7, much video of Cedar Rapids under water.

Things I heard:

-) Sandbag basement drains and sumps to slow down water entering basement
-) Officials announced flood would at most be 3 feet above devasting flood of 1993, 22 feet. Currently 32 foot above flood stage.
-) Big main, modern fire department under 10' of water.
-) If well funded and water recedes quickly, 30 days to strip business to impermeable, dry out, back into movein condition.
-) Many homes and businesses won't be rehabbed within 30 days and will have to be destroyed.
-) Neighbors' son lived and work downtown CR, 2nd story apartment OK. Couple days ago they learned business would be flooded with a couple feet, sandbagged, then water rose quickly to 4 foot deep and breached bags.

I offered through friends, my house as a sanctuary for a family in need. But CR is 70 miles away.

I am headed to Fort Madison, where Mississippi is expected to rise dramatically higher than the flood of month ago. Glad I don't have a boat in the marina. Maybe I can snag a run-away boat escaping downstream.

Come to think of it house boats in CR are breaking away.....but would be reduced to flotsam by the time they reached FM.

Andy

Report from Iowa

Sirens going off, tornado 8 miles south moving NE at 51 mph.

Cool.

...

Hi, from Fairfield,

Survived bypassing of tornado ( dopplered, not seen)

Sky was really spooky clouds going every which-way.
The Sky did turn pale green in the area of the tornado.
Rained hard, blew, then all was quiet.

The news pics of Cedar Rapids are sobering.
I had driven down many of those streets with the affordably priced homes.
They are now have water up over the 2nd story.
500 year flood 14 years after the 100 flood.
They expected it to go a couple feet over the 19' 1993 high-water mark.
It is now 27 feet and climbing.
Saw a TV news clip about a Jon boat rescuing a couple old guys from their brick house, while the boatmen was fighting a fast moving current. jeeze.

Was at the neighbors helping him figure out vcr-DVD dubbing. His weather radio kept coming on every 15 minutes with new warnings of everything within a 100 miles.

Andy

Oil

From known associates:

This is a couple years old but contains some good stats:

US is about 25% of world oil consumption;

US imports about 60% of oil consumed;

About 45% of each barrel goes to gasoline -- balance to diesel, industrial production;

Some gas goes to delivery vans and taxis, thus about 40% of each barrel of oil goes to gas for commuter and leisure driving.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3947

And:

I found this surprising:

(for 2008) "Canada remained the largest exporter of total petroleum in March, exporting 2.542 million barrels per day to the United States, which is an increase from last month (2.464 thousand barrels per day). The second largest exporter of total petroleum was Saudi Arabia with 1.542 million barrels per day."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

I sold CNQ a couple years ago after it had doubled. It doubled again.

Gas Gun

I am not quite sure what to make of this picture, but it is certainly startling. Shooting ones self in the head with a gasoline nozzle? Is that what we are all doing?

Letter from CA

I'm writing from the Mountain View library, over the free WiFi network that Google has provided for MV.

MV library is very nice, superior even to Foster City, bigger, better appointed, more computers.

Google Wifi sounds attractive because it's free, they have a secure encrypted version, and they have nodes all over MV -- including one directly across the street from my apt. Sounds great, right? Well there are all kinds of conditionals: the signal works best outside, but if you want to get it inside your house, you need a "wifi modem" to capture and amplify the signal.

How does a "modem" differ from an "antenna," "amplifier," "bridge," or a "wifi wireless LAN ethernet converter adapter card?" I have no idea. But there are apparently only a couple items that will work:

Ruckus Metroflex Wi-Fi Modem and

Peplink Surf 200 Wi-Fi modem

Reading the support page, I see all kinds of comments like:

"I bought the modem and still can't get the signal."

"I get a strong signal but my PC still won't connect."

"I get a strong signal but only intermittently; it's very unreliable."

Anyway I configured a connect profile here at the library for the Google "secure" connection. I'll test it in front of my building. If I can get a strong, consistent signal, maybe I'll invest in a "modem" and try to access it from inside. But what do you bet it turns out to be a crock? There's always Comcast.

Initial search for hotspots at my building revealed DOZENS, mostly secured.

I'm leary of poaching an unsecured node, although I used in FC for 18 months with no apparent identity theft issues. Comments?

Other notes on the move:

Apartment is OK, large spacious with nice appointments, but no in unit washer/dryer or garage. Residents seem mature and reasonably well-behaved, but who the hell knows.

Even with few actual problems, the move was exhausting and depressing.

After years of ranting about the financial foolishness of buying a house, and my dogged determination to live in cheap apartments, I have quite suddenly become intolerant of seedy living conditions: I don't like living around poor people, living in dirty neighborhoods, making the best of crummy apartments, and mouthing platitudes like "people everywhere are all alike, and all deserve respect."

For whatever reasons, my values seem to have finally caught up with the average upper middle class person, viz:

I'm going to drive the extra mile to the nice Safeway, so I don't have to see or be around fat Mexicans wearing huge t-shirts and huge black jeans and braided ponytails and tatoos, dragging their filthy kids around. I'm going to spend the extra money to live in a nice place, around cleaner quieter people, because I don't like seeing trash and plastic crap and kid paraphernalia all around. People everywhere AREN'T all alike, and they DON'T all deserve respect. I may even buy a "nice" car.

I won't say I'm "embracing" it, I see it as more of a capitulation. And I guess all this makes me a big elitist fag. Well, whatever, I have no explanation. That's just the way it is. I await to see what horrible judgement befalls me for being vain and effete. My bet is, no penalty in particular. It may just as likely produce benefits somehow.

I've long held these loosely formed beliefs in social justice that say, "no one gets a Mercedes until everybody is at least fed." Well I see nothing past or present to indicate that that's the way the world works. So why should I be the one stuck out in the cold, stubbornly adhering to some radical fringe viewpoint, and probably suffering considerable detriment as a result? Stupid.

Last notes: transitional periods highlight the things one really values. Over the past 3 weeks, I've learned some of mine:

My coffee machine and good coffee;

Hot water for bathing;

Razor and shave cream;

TV;

News radio;

Internet connection, computer and printer;

Preparing my own food;

Clean commodious accomodations;

Peace and quiet.

I wasn't without wheels but that's gotta be up at the top too.

Regards.

Moose Turd Pie

I stumbled across this somewhere. In memory of Utah Phillips. Listen all the way to the end. It's not too long.

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

If you ever watch PBS you have undoubtably seen that this program was made possible by a grant from the "John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation". So, did you ever wonder just who John D. MacArthur was? My brother found a video he liked: Cspan BookTV program. I didn't watch it because it uses Real Player, which I despise.

New data regarding an old argument: did life originate on earth?

From Don.

Did life originate on earth (recent findings)?:

NASA's new composite photo of the Milky Way:



120k old bacteria found living in ice

What is the Oort cloud composed of?

How Dumb Was That?

Let Tam tell you.

Conspiracy Theories 'R' Us

Oooo! This one is really good!

Inside Richard Mellon Scaife's Conspiracy