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• Go Mr. Honest Liberal!!

  31Mar
  Categories: Political Comments: 0

  CQ has the scoop:

  The New Republic’s Martin Peretz ventures into nearly uncharted territory for the Left, even the center-Left, in the latest edition of TNR. He argues that George Bush deserves more credit for tranforming the Middle East than given him by the media and punditry, and takes them to task for their “churlishness”:

  If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others. He pursued his goal obstinately, they would say, without filtering his thoughts through the medical research establishment. And he didn’t share his research with competing labs and thus caused resentment among other scientists who didn’t have the resources or the bold–perhaps even somewhat reckless–instincts to pursue the task as he did. And he completely ignored the World Health Organization, showing his contempt for international institutions. Anyway, a cure for cancer is all fine and nice, but what about aids?

  No, the president has not discovered a cure for cancer. But there is a pathology, a historical pathology, that he has attacked with unprecedented vigor and with unprecedented success. I refer, of course, to the political culture of the Middle East, which the president may actually have changed. And he has accomplished this genuinely momentous transformation in ways that virtually the entire foreign affairs clerisy–the cold-blooded Brent Scowcroft realist Republicans and almost all the Democrats–never thought possible. Or, perhaps, in ways some of them thought positively undesirable. Bush, it now seems safe to say, is one of the great surprises in modern U.S. history. Nothing about his past suggested that he harbored these ideals nor the qualities of character required for their realization. Right up to the moment Bush became president, I was convinced that his mind, at least on matters Levantine, belonged to his father and to James Baker III, whose worldview seemed to be defined by the pecuniary prejudice of oil and Texas: Keep the ruling Arabs happy. But I was wrong, and, in light of what has already been achieved in the Middle East, I am glad to say so. Most American liberals, alas, enjoy no similar gladness. They are not exactly pleased by the positive results of Bush’s campaign in the Middle East. They deny and resent and begrudge and snipe. They are trapped in the politics of churlishness.

• Fairfax Underground [updated]

  30Mar
  Categories: General, Humor, Tech Comments: 17

  I found from a /. sig a cool site called the Fairfax Underground. Fairfax is about 30-40 minutes from our place. The Fairfax Underground is a forum/community for Fairfax County (and the surrounding counties: Prince William (5 min away), Loudoun, and Arlington) residents to communicate.

  One of the cooler is features is an Arrest/Ticket Search. The Fairfax County PD posts a weekly list on their site. He made a script that for the last 2 years has been pulling the contents of this list, storing, and indexing it. Found a bunch of Mennonites (Loretta, was that you?) on it!

  This guy seems to have a fixation with cops/crime. Another one of the great things about this site is the Pictures/Video section. The best in that section is the video of Fairfax Co. cops doing donuts in a snowy parking lot. Some other highlights: A female driver gets gas, POLICE LINE! DO NOT CROSS!, a cop getting one instead of doing one, a sweet cop car with a cool set of tags.

  Update: LOL! I found this guy’s (un-password protected!) log file analyzer. It has complete statistical information about his site’s visitors. This would include all the searches that were done on his Arrest/Ticket Search. The way I found it was this: He was looking at his website stats and saw that someone had visited his site from mine (because I posted a link in this post). He followed the link back to see who was linking to him (I always do this myself; it’s very interesting). When he did that, it created a log entry in my log that gave me the exact address of his log analyzer software. I did the exact same thing he did: Looked at my logs and followed the link back: Voila! I am so l337…

• Never Left Hanging [updated]

  29Mar
  Categories: Humor, Work Comments: 84

  One thing that I have always deeply appreciated about this bathroom is the fact that because of this:

  

  I have never been left hanging:

  

  Update: Welcome basil’s blog and Conservative Cat readers. I liked what basil said about my post: “The (not so) Daily Me understands the importance of paperwork.”

• Guest Blogger Announcement [updated]

  25Mar
  Categories: Blogosphere, General Comments: 5

  I would be more than happy to have a guest post a post on my blog. If it’s good enough, I might even be interested in making this a group blog. (might is the operative word here, please be aware Even if you would want to be become a regular guest blogger, that would be great. This is mostly for people who don’t have a blog that come accross something cool or have an urge to post a blog post but don’t have a blog. I will be very flexible. If you wish to do this, just leave a comment with your email address in the proper field. All comments get emailed to me, so I’ll be sure to get it.

  Update: I will, of course, fully attribute what you write when you guest blog. I will give as much or as little identifying info as you want. If you want to do it anonymously, I will just say that an anonymous guest blogger submitted it. If you want to provide your full name including middle name, your cell phone number, your email address, your address, your birthday; I’ll post it.

• Traffic [updated]

  25Mar
  Categories: Blogosphere, General, Personal, Tech, Traffic Report Comments: 0

  Traffic is up! Here are the page views for 2005:

  

  The unique visitors for 2005:

  

  The unique visitors for March:

  

  Update: It doesn’t seem very long ago that I reached 10,000 visitors total! Now I have 8,000 in one month and the month is not even over yet! One of the things that has done a little bit for me is using Ping-o-matic! to let all the blog search engines and blog aggregators know that I have updated. The whole Virtuosa/Napster thing got me a lot of traffic too. I also submitted myself to several directory projects including the Open Directory Project.

• Trip to KS

  23Mar
  Categories: Christianity, Humor, Personal, Work Comments: 8

  I worked at Golden Rule from 9:30 AM - 11:30 PM trying to catch up from the TN trip. I then went home and packed and did laundry ’til 2:15. I then took a shower and tried to find some eggs for breakfast. We were out. So I decided to make waffles. I couldn’t find the waffle iron. I look in the place it usually was. Not there. I looked thru every cupoboard. Nowhere to be found. At this point I was having some serious questions as to why I couldn’t just eat cereal like any normal person would have done in such a sitation. I considered waking Mom to ask her, but I decided I was too nice to do that; plus I didn’t want her to look at me like I’m crazy and realize that’s she’s right. I looked again in the place I had first looked. There it was. In plain sight. I made some culinary masterpieces (I will share pictures later) which I topped with syrup, strawberry jam, caramel syrup and chocolate syrup. Dad and I went down to the office where we finished getting everything together and I sent off some of the things I sold on eBay.

  Soon Jeff Groff picked me up. Jeff is a book rack servicer for Choice Books. It just so happened that his route that day included Reagan. It was also his first stop. It was also timed exactly right. He dropped me off and I checked in curbside because they are less particular about weight. I had a very heavy box. I checked it in and went inside to Starbucks. As I waited in line, the skycap came up to me and said, “Sir! Sir! Your bag was too heavy. I’m sorry, I didn’t know until I picked it up. I could get in trouble if I let it go. You’ll need to take some things out or pay a fee.” I went over, knowing that if a bag was over 50 pounds, they charged $25. If it was over 75, they charged $50. I cut off the tape as best I could with my key. They didn’t have a scissor behind the counter for security reasons. I took out a toner cartridge. It now weighed 74.8! Yay! I taped it back up. The Northwest rep came over and said, “It’s still too heavy! Over 50 is $25 and over 70 is $50. Grrr… I had the weight threshold wrong… I laboriously used my key again and put the toner back in and taped it back up. TSA then untaped it to inspect it, then taped it back up.

  I worked on CBNOVA’s T1 quote for about half-an-hour. Then I slept for an hour. (Remember, I never did get to bed the night before.) I hustled thru Memphis to my connecting flight to Wichita. I met a Holdeman lady in the boarding area that was heading to KS as well. I worked on the T1 quote the whole way. I sat beside a GWU International Affairs major. When I landed in Wichita, I had a voicemail waiting from our Amadeus rep from Memphis. She said that she had heard I didn’t get much sleep the night before and was wondering if she could meet me right outside security to have a hot breakfast. I called her back and thanked her profusely and said that I would have loved to and that I’m sorry but I didn’t get the message until after I left Memphis and that I probably wouldn’t have had time anyway and that it was so sweet of her and I hoped she hadn’t made a special trip out. She was silent for a bit then sheepishly admitted that she hadn’t called me until after I left Memphis and had done it as a joke. *groan* The thought of that hot breakfast!

  Jeff N. graciously picked me up at the airport. We also met an Ellis Miller who is my dad’s first cousin. He was there to pick up his son who was on my flight as well. We stopped at Best Buy to get a firewire card. We looked and couldn’t find it for a while even after a rep told us where it was. They had them in new-fangled boxes that don’t look anything like the usual ones. What is this world coming to? (/rhetorical question)

  I went to Grandpa’s for lunch and met Elmer Smucker, who is conducting pre-ordination meetings at Center. We (Grandpa, Elmer, Uncle Lowell and I)had an extremely interesting discussion about various doctrinal matters. The main topic of discussion was Effussion vs. Immersion. I became immersed in their effusive conversation. *groan* Sorry, couldn’t resist! Lowell shared an anecdote that illustrated the rapid maturation of technology. He and his 3-year-old son, Joey, were at a truck stop. They saw a man using a pay phone. Joey said, “Ha! Look Dad! That guy forgot his cell phone!”

  I believe I have set a new record for most consecutive hours worked by a Golden Rule employee: 27 hours! I worked from 9:30 AM, March 22 to 12:30 PM, March 23. During that time I got one hour of sleep. I have worked 29 out of the last 32 hours. I have been awake 31 out of the last 32 hours. I think I am going to go to Grandpa’s to take a nap now.

• eBay

  22Mar
  Categories: General, Tech, Work Comments: 6

  eBay totally rocks! I got $530 for a buncha old equipment that we had no use for and would have thrown away. I sold a scanner, two old SCSI hard drives, an ISA SCSI controller card, a brand-new 40 GB hard drive, and a brand-new AMD Athlon 2100+ XP CPU, Heatsink, and Fan.

  I got great prices for the stuff! The standout was the AMD Athlon 2100+ XP. A new ATHLON 3000 Barton costs $129. My several-years-old AMD Athlon 2100+ XP brought $152.50. My two old SCSI drives brought $128 & $113. New price? $149. These things are like 6 years old. The 40 GB IDE drive brought $39. Street price: $49

  Some of this is understandable if you think about it. Here a dialogue I had with one person who asked me a question about the CPU: Him: “Are you selling anything else with this? $137 for an Athlon XP 2100+ with fan is about 3x what it is actually worth! Jags” Me: “No I am not. I know. *grins* I suppose it has something to do with the fact that they don’t make this proc anymore? Buyer probably has a system where just the proc needs replacing… Prob just a case of supply and demand.” Him: “Lucky you! Jags” The 40 GB drive’s price makes sense, but the 36.7 GB SCSI drives price seems a tad too close to new price for something so old.

• People getting wedgied

  22Mar
  Categories: Blogosphere, Humor Comments: 0

  Someone was disappointed when they got to my blog after searching for “pictures of people getting wedgied” All they got was me talking about pictures of people getting wedgied.

• A Google Employee, the SecState & the Laundry

  22Mar
  Categories: Humor, Tech Comments: 0

  A Google employee had her hand full of underwear when former SecState Colin Powell walked in! Right behind him were the two Google founders (Larry Page & Sergey Brin) and the Google CEO (Eric Schmidt). Powell proceeded to give her some advice on laundry. As with all such situations, there were some perfect lines that she could/should have said that would have been brilliantly funny, but they were only thought of later.

• Driving Home from TN

  21Mar
  Categories: General, Humor, Personal Comments: 92

  The trip from TN was made less tedious by texting people on the way. I met (ok, maybe not met; got to know) a girl from OK, a friend of Jen’s. I also chatted extensively with Jen last night, as well as some today on the way home. I have recently come to enjoy SMSing a lot. My cell phone bill has also gone up in unpleasant ways that makes it necessary for me to look into to getting a plan that includes text messages, which makes them cheaper by an order of magnitude.

  Popular Science has some very telling numbers on pain killers, entitled “Painkillers, or Just Plain Killers”:

  The recent brouhaha over the safety of blockbuster drugs Vioxx and Celebrex has turned up some distressing facts.

  100 - Percent increase of heart attack and stroke found in a 2004 Merck-sponsered study of 2,586 patients taking the painkiller Vioxx.

  88,000-140,000 - Estimated cases of serious coronary heart disease in the U.S. cause by Vioxx since its launch in 1999, according to an FDA study.

  1.2 million - Number of Americans with Vioxx precriptions when it was voluntarily recalled last September.

  100,000 - Number of patients who switched from Vioxx to Celebrex, a prescription painkiller in the same class, th eweek after the recall

  150 - Percent increase in risk of heart attack and stroke in a National Cancer Institute study of 2,000-plus Celebrex patients last December

  0 - percent more effective Vioxx and Celebrex are at relieving pain compared with traditional pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen

  100,000 - estimated number of Americans who die every year because of adverse reastions to prescription drugs.

  Very sobering.

  While we were in TN we played Acquire, Rook, Ping-Pong, Mafia, and Killer-Wink. On the evening of the funeral, at supper at the church, I had an audience of 5 Beachy men (one on each side and three across from me) who quizzed me about telecom and internet. I gave quite the lecture. I think I got some new customers and doubled the knowledge of some Beachy men about the internet. The situation was reversed this morning as I sat in Paul’s living room and learned much about the practical aspects of wiring various types of electrical circuits. I knew a lot about the theoretical side, but not much about the practical side. The discussion came up because we were talking about the electricity going out at Grandmas’s funeral. (It was really, really hot: 100+ degrees with No AC… 700-1000 people there…)

  Quote of the Day: “I’m so sorry!! I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately!” -my 14-year-old cousin Renita (whose brother just drowned) after burping

• Trip to the South

  17Mar
  Categories: Christianity, Personal Comments: 0

  We left at 7 AM this morning for Tennessee and my cousin’s funeral. A 15-year old needed a ride to Paris, TN. So we took his family’s 11 passenger Maxi van and dropped him off on the way. Tony drove for the first four hours. I drove the rest of the way.

  I was amazed by the good ol’ Southern hospitality, etc… When we got there, the house was full of friends. People kept dropping by to say Hi and express their sorrow and empathy. Neighbors kept coming with food, food and more food. The church girls came and cleaned their house from top to bottom. It was most amazing.

  I heard the whole story from Paul again first-hand. Some extra details gleaned: As soon as Paul pulled him out of the water, he pumped his chest and performed CPR until he got blood back in his face. Then, since it was cold, he picked him up and ran to the house. He laid him on the living room floor and performed CPR until the paramedics came. They performed CPR and found the pulse. They called for a chopper. The chopper got there from Memphis (an hour’s drive away) 8 minutes later!

  The viewing will be tomorrow from 1-3 at Paul’s house. Then we’ll eat supper at church and the viewing will go on at the church from 5-10. The funeral is at 10 on Saturday.

  Benji commented that it is just not right having to wear a suit for 48 straght almost: viewing, viewing, funeral, church on Sunday….

• SMS Fun

  16Mar
  Categories: General, Humor, Personal Comments: 10

  I got this text (SMS) message from Ted today:

  FW: Today is a national day for the Disabled. Please take the time to forward this message to a retarded person as I have done.

  I got some replies that were marginally clever, some that were amusing, but last reply was immensely clever. The first reply was from Patrick & Joel (they both sent the same thing):

  FW: Today is a national day for the Disabled. Please take the time to forward this message to a retarded person as I have done.

  I kind of left myself open to that one… =) The next reply was from Jeff the Libertarian:

  Sorry Hans but sending that msg to 52% of everyone in the U.S.. would drive my phone bill through the roof.

  I assume he was trying to refer to the people which voted for Bush. In that case he got three things wrong (non-Conservatives usually do ). The first being that it was 51% of voters that voted for Bush. The second being that since we don’t get 100% voter turnout (we got 60.7%), his phone bill would only be for sending texts to 62,040,606 people, not the 150,795,302 that would comprise the 51% of the 295,677,064 that are in the U.S. The third thing? It would be the people who voted for Kerry that should get the texts… But then of course you would look getting defamation lawsuits, accusations discrimination and hate literature…

  The next reply was from Ruthie:

  You have nerve! You better watch it!

  The next, which was the funniest, cleverest, and best, was from Alvin (Levi & Louisa’s cousin):

  I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person

• Drowned

  15Mar
  Categories: Personal Comments: 3

  At 12:05 CST, my cousin (Dad’s sister’s son), Caleb Overholt, was found drowned in the pond. Caleb was 3-year old Downs-syndrome baby.

  Caleb was out with his brother Ronald. Caleb and his brother Micah went to the house, except when Micah went inside, Caleb didn’t go with him. Ronald thought he went into the house. About 15 minutes later, Ronald came into the house and Darlene (Dad’s sister; Caleb’s mom) asked Ronald where Caleb was; he replied that he had come into the house. They searched the house high and low. They couldn’t find him. They looked out back where they thought he might have been. They called Paul (Darlene’s husband) who came home right away. They looked out back for a while beause that’s where Ronald, Micah, and Caleb had been. Paul and Ronald each took a pickup truck and criscrossed through the fields trying to find him. Darlene, in the meantime, went to the pond and walked the entire length of the front side. She saw nothing. Later as they continued to search, Ronald walked across the bridge to the island and down on the other side of the island he found him. He yelled right away. They carried him up on the porch. They performed CPR. The called 911. The EMTs came. Performed CPR. The EMTs detected a faint pulse. He was airlifted to Memphis. The rest of the family drove. They got stuck in some sort of road block. They got there. The doctor came out and told them he was sorry. Darlene was able to hold him for 15 minutes.

  Last night, another Down’s Syndrome person died. She was a sculptor. Amazing!

• NASA

  15Mar
  Categories: Blogosphere, Humor, Personal, Science Comments: 1

  NASA paid a visit to my blog. They came from Google after having searched for “‘communal shower’ ’shower heads’”. They undoubtedly were drawn by my, *cough, cough*, delightful, *cough* experience with communal showers.

• Collisions [updated]

  12Mar
  Categories: Humor, Personal Comments: 1

  What can Brown do for you? That’s question I asked after nearly getting run over by a UPS truck the other day. I was driving on a long one lane gravel lane and rounding a sharp blind curve and a gargantuan brown object comes barreling, and I mean she was moving, around the corner. I was moving very slowing because of equally gargantuan pot holes and because I was going around a blind corner; she had no such compunctions. As soon as she saw me she cranked the wheel and flew out into the field; she kept right on going: jounced back on to the road and never missed a beat.

  I was tempted to start this paragraph with the same sentence that I started the previous, but I have refrained. Suffice it to say: Using the restroom in ski boots and three layers of snow gear presents its own unique set of challenges.

  While we are on the subject: Using a porta-potty in such cold makes for an interesting experience as well. There is a (two actually; one marked men and the other marked women; totally superfluous; being gender-marked that is) john-john halfway up the slopes at Massanutten.

  We went skiing last night and Saturday a week ago. On last Saturday Merv went with us! One time as Merv, Patrick and I came charging down the slope we got stopped by the ski patrol for speeding. I should not impugn the whole ski patrol in this because it was only Tom. The rest of the ski patrol are actually quite nice. But Tom… He kept repeating over and over, “Hello, I’m Tom, and I’m with the ski patrol.” Merv and I were about to get on the lift when he stopped us. Patrick was over about 15-20 feet away. Like an idiot, instead of quickly getting on the lift, he came over to see what’s up; Tom pipes up, “I was going to talk to you next. Hello, I’m Tom, and I’m with the ski patrol.” Next he patronizingly asked: “Those slow signs out there, what do you think they mean?” I answered, “To go slower than you were before and to get ready to stop.” He said while bugging his eyes and nodding slowly, “That’s right.” He made a permanent marker mark on Merv & Patrick’s lift tickets; “If another ski patrol has to talk with you, they’ll know that I already talked with you and they will take your lift tickets away.” For me, with my season pass, he took down my pass number to log in a book. The ridiculous things were: 1. The slopes were deserted 2. I stopped in about 4 ft. 3. I looked upslope for merging skiers 4. I have never once hit somebody on a ski slope. Of course that last one I didn’t expect him to know, but nonetheless… What really got me steamed was the fact that while we were going up the lift later in the evening we saw Tom coming flying down the slope through the Slow Zone at a high rate of speed. We were so bitter. Later I talked to another ski patrol guy about it and he asked who stopped us. I said, “Tom.” He said, “Tom.. hmm, Tom, Tom, Tom… Oh….. HIM…..” I got the feeling he was notorious for being over-zealous or was new or something.

  When Heidi was going down Rebel’s Yell, she fell and her ski went out to the middle of slope. She was going out to get it and young punk of a ski patrol yelled to her from the lift, “Can’t take blue, huh? You should stick to the bunny slope! Go back to the side!” He said this in a manner that lead her to believe he was going to come help her get it. She waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, he appeared along with his non-ski-patrol buddy. He sprayed her with snow as he went by. She yelled, “I thought you were going to help.” He yelled back, “I just wanted you out of the way.”

  Last night Benji, Glen, and I went down Diamond Jim for the first time that night. Glen went first. He managed to invert himself and flew down an embankment head first
  
  and broke a fence. I would have much money paid a video of this for. I stopped took off my skis and went back. Notice this was a 4 foot (50 inches) embankment. There was no way he was going to get out of there without help. I sat on the edge of the embankment and put my feet against the fence and pulled him back to the right side of the fence. Then I was stuck. My feet were against the fence and I was just hanging there. Only a small part of my upper body was on the snow surface. The rest was suspended over the embankment drop off. The snow surface was a sheet of ice, so I could gain no purchase. Benji had to gallomp down with his snowboard and plant it hard in the ice. I then grabbed his board and pulled myself out. It was an interesting study in friction as I weigh 210 and he is a mere 120. Glen has a big gash in the side of his neck, he hyperextended the tendons in his arm, and twisted his ankle. He’s gonna play volleyball with us tonight. =)

  One time I was really flying down the slope (Merv and I were discussing how fast we go. He can run 13 mph, so we figured that we go at least 40 mph. UPDATE: The world record for skiing is 156 MPH) and lost control and my skis. I continued to rocket down the slope because of the speed I was going before and because the slope was so icy. I missed a big, fat, solid, hard, scary-looking light pole by about a foot! I was going down face-pointing-up-the-slope-back-first so I didn’t see it until after I was past. I was briefly very relieved. That was being briefly very relieved? That was right before I plowed into a prickly bush of some sort.

  Benji and I were working on our jumps that night. I did a really nice jump; 2 feet and I landed it. There was only a slight problem; at that point I was going really fast and there was another jump right ahead of me. I jumped that too, maybe 1.5 ft, and almost landed it too. I hit and bounced, did a total flip in the air and landed bereft of my skis. I bounced down the slope a ways! Benji came down the slope behind me and I yelled to him, “YEAH!!” There’s nothing like bouncing down the slope on a winter night! I suggest you try it!

  UPDATE: Chat transcript with Naomi:
  [14:22] starrsoft2888: world record for skiing is 156 MPH
  [14:22] DarrsLady: Hmm.
  [14:22] DarrsLady: And what can we learn from that?
  [14:23] starrsoft2888: that i need to learn to ski faster
  [14:24] DarrsLady: lol!