- Apple patches Panther but not older OS, which means that 10.2 will have a security flaw lurking in it. Unless Apple changes their policy and issues a security patch. From a software developer’s point of view, it’s nice that Apple’s encouraging everyone to upgrade every year so I don’t have to worry as much about supporting older versions of the OS, but as a user, having to pay $129 every year to upgrade might make me a little nervous. And yes, I’m already running Panther — as a developer, I get upgrades as part of my subscription with Apple. Thankfully, my FireWire hard drives don’t use the Oxford 922 chip. [vowe]
- Police brace for homecoming disturbances, but don’t really expect a riot this time. More likely is just a bunch of parties scattered around the neighborhood, complete with the normal assholery, while the cops sit around waiting in Dinkytown videotaping everything Just In Case.
- U.S. to Install Biometric Screens at 115 airports and 14 seaports to check identities of millions of foreign visitors by checking their fingerprints and check their picture to make sure they’re not bad guys.
It will be used for the estimated 24 million foreigners traveling on tourist, business and student visas who enter through an airport or seaport.
Hey, it’s not a police state if it’s only foreigners we’re stomping with the jackboots, right? But remember, it’s all so we can feel more secure! - U radio station passes the test with ‘real music-lovers’:
The difference between Radio K and KQRS is the difference between a taste of Melt Banana and 10 helpings of Fleetwood Mac.
[press-patch] - esr thinks hackers need an Appropriate Hacker Emblem and has a proposal. I like the choice, but I’m not so sure about the need. Then again, I probably don’t qualify as a hacker most of the time anymore. [accordionguy]
- Military Uses Hussein Hoard For Swift Aid talks about how the military is redistributing money seized from seized Iraqi assets, the Saddam Hussein regime’s overseas bank accounts and cash stockpiles found in palaces and the walls of government buildings in Iraq. They’re getting the job done quickly and efficiently, and a lot cheaper than reconstruction efforts that are being done with money allocated by Congress, and the people they’re paying to do the work are actually Iraqis, rather than companies from the US. Does this mean “military intelligence” is becoming less of an oxymoron? [instapundit]
- I Spit On Your Taste: Joe Bob Briggs talks about movies, and will be appearing at the St. Anthony Main Theaters to host the Profoundly Disturbing Film Festival on Halloween night. It begins at 8pm and runs for 12 hours. 612-331-4723 for more info.
- Tomorrow’s also the last day you can see the Play Ball exhibit over at the Minnesota History Center. I’d like to take the afternoon off to head over there, since I haven’t seen it yet, but they close at 3pm on Fridays, which will make it tough.
- If you want A Very Scary Solstice, you’d better order your Cthulhu Carols now! [fark!]
- Thousands of Britons expelled by Kenya, which I guess means the odds of seeing Tusker Lager in stores anytime soon aren’t going to improve (well, apparently it is available in stores somewhere around here, since they’ve got a distributor in Minneapolis, but I haven’t seen it since their reorganization in 1988). Oh well, it’s more of a summertime beer, anyhow.
- This October 2003 Aurora Gallery has some cool looking pictures. There’s also a cool picture at the Astronomy Picture of the Day site today. Sadly, it was cloudy and raining around here last night, so I didn’t even venture outside after sundown. [fark!]
- This morning I thought I’d overslept while dreaming a pleasant dream. It felt like it was about noon, and I started to try and think about how I was going to juggle my schedule in order to still everything done that’s on my to-do list for today. All this thinking woke me up, and when I rolled over and looked at the clock, it was 4:30AM, the same time I’ve been waking up all week. One of these days my body’s going to adjust to going off Daylight Saving Time and let me sleep until six or seven, but it hasn’t happened yet. Instead, I’m just dreaming about being able to sleep late.
- Spam Pitches Are Mutating Faster as spammers fight to stay ahead of the filters. I’ve been seeing more spam making it past SpamAssassin lately, and have been thinking about various ways to improve matters. I think the first thing I’m going to have to do it build a whitelist though, as tightening up the filters any further will probably start leading to false-positives.
- Some people are using A Change of Habits to Elude Spam’s Pall, but more are just grumbling. At the moment, I’m in the “grumbling” camp.
- Big Companies Add to Spam, selling the email address you use with them to others for an additional buck. I’m starting to think it might be worthwhile to set up a new email account for every company I do business with to track down who’s selling my name. I don’t think I should have to do that, but there are too many companies that have sold my contact information already. I’ve been using variations on my name for donations to non-profits for years, and the NRA and Clean Water Action are responsible for about half my paper junk-mail between them. Yeah, I’ll be giving them my email address Real Soon Now.
- If you do send me email, you should probably know that HTML-only email gets junked as spam immediately. I won’t see it until the end of the month when I take a (very) quick look through the spam that’s been filed during the month. 99% of the HTML-only mail is a virus, so filtering it out was the the most effective five-minute fix I’ve ever made in my email handling. The link will tell you how to shut that misfeature of your mail program off.
- Survey says Minneapolis is most fun city in U.S. ahead of Orange County, CA and San Jose, CA. No really, that’s what it says. We beat out fifty-five other cities and Niagra Falls finished dead last. [press-patch]
- This list of 25 signs you’ve “grown up” is a bit depressing, especially since it covers so much ground.
- Yesterday that asshole, Dave Winer said that Linux ships with
And Linux ships with every security feature wide open.
I didn’t feel like talking about just how wrong that was, but Dan Lyke has cleared things up. He still doesn’t mention that there’s an OS out there already that was designed for security, though. [flutterby] - Homecoming traditions are the stuff of legends - or at least fairy tales tells what’s going to be going on around the U this week. Homecoming is Saturday, and I’m expecting the worst, especially after this weekend saw windows broken at the church next door to me (Friday night at about 11:30, and the breaking glass noise woke me up) and other assorted vandalism in the neighborhood. For me, a riot would probably be better than a “normal weekend,” since a riot would at least draw all the trouble into Dinkytown.
- I walked through another house yesterday. After spending about an hour looking at it, and then much of the afternoon pondering, I’ve decided it just won’t work. Too much work to be done on the house, and I won’t have the time to get it fixed up this year unless I don’t even move into it and just get contractors working on it right away. This is probably about the worst time for me to be looking for houses since I’m busy with work and a bunch of personal things, but with the vandalism Friday night, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to live here anymore either. I like most of my neighbors, but there are just too many assholes in the neighborhood every Friday and Saturday night.
- On a more recreational note, the Washington Post has a roundup of five new books on Winston Churchill. Dang. I bet I end up buying at least one of them.
- Finally, Company fined $2 million in first ruling on California’s anti-spam law, the first judgement under the law. I don’t expect it to have much effect on the amount of spam I get, but there’s some satisfaction in thinking that maybe it will bankrupt these bastards. [fark!]
- Marlins win series, 4-2, thanks to an impressive game by Josh Beckett. I was really impressed by him last night, after starting to root for the fish about game three. Here’s hoping that they won’t get dismantled in the off-season.
- This one’s from Jim:
The interesting thing is that I actually changed over both my interstate and intrastate long distance to Qwest, along with moving a number of services to a package. I’m waiting for the first bill under the new plan to see what the price difference really will be, but I’ve been told I’ll save around $20 per month.We’ve all seen Dave rant about Qwest on occasion. Read an insider’s take on what it’s like to work there. It reminds me (somewhat) of my former phone job where the recent emphasis has been to create a
sales culture
(though Qwest looks much worse). [jim] - I’ve been looking for a house for a few months (well, actively for a few months, I’ve been watching the market for what seems like years) now, and I spent yesterday afternoon our looking at houses in person. This house in NE Minneapolis was the best of the batch yesterday. It’s a little disappointing. Even though the house was recently remodeled, there’s still a lot of work to be done, some of which is fixing up things that were botched during the remodel. But it was a productive afternoon, I think. I’ve got a lot better idea of what kinds of things are deal-breakers when I walk into a house, as does Dan, who’s helping me find something. And sadly, I’m more convinced that I’m not going to find my perfect house here in Marcy-Holmes since the prices are just too high.
- Microsoft Puts DRM into Office, and it’s not a good thing. Yes, it’s optional at the moment, but it’s also another way for Microsoft to lock people into their products. Personally, it means I won’t even be bothering to upgrade my office to the version for Mac OS X, and if people want to send me Word or Excel docs, and I can’t open them in something else, I’ll just have to ask them to resend the document in a more reasonable format. [vowe]
- Speaking of developments I don’t like from Microsoft: Here’s some Virtual PC 2004 Beta Screenshots, including the note:
Sad, but not surprising at all. [vowe]The first thing we noticed was the removal of Linux, BSD, Netware and Solaris from the Guest Operating System Wizard list, which was bound to happen to Virtual PC in the hands of Microsoft.
- Okay, maybe this isn’t why we liberated Afghanistan, but it’s a pretty good result (there’s 10 pictures to look at if you so choose). Wouldn’t have seen that with the Taliban in charge. As Glenn says:
I may qualify as more conservative than Glenn, but I’m definitely in on the Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! bit. [instapundit]As for the rest, I’m not a “conservative.” I’m strongly pro-bikini. I don’t believe in “traditional family values” as a political platform. I’m more in the Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! category. If that bothers, you, too bad. There are plenty of other blogs out there.
- Says here Naked bouncers reduce violence in clubs, at least when they’re women. Hey, that’d work for me. [jwz]
- These aren’t my pants is
A [hilarious] clubgoer’s guide to getting frisked, tweaking in public, and being your bouncer’s best friend.
Very good reading if you spend any time in bars/clubs. [jwz] - Cool. A Croatian version of my Magical Macintosh Key Sequences is now available. I’m going to have to update it pretty soon with 10.3 information one of these days, which will mean some more work for the translators.
- According to SpaceWeather.com, there were pretty decent auroræ last night, and there’s a good chance for some more tonight about 9pm CDT if I'm reading things right. [doc]
- Just a reminder that Daylight Savings Time ends this weekend. An extra hour of drinking tonight! Woo! Or more likely, I’ll just wake up an hour earlier tomorrow morning. [fark!]
- According to the Drinkometer, all the booze I’ve consumed in my life would buy 1⁄3 of a Ferrari. Guess I haven’t been trying hard enough.
- While watching TV last night, I saw an ad for a razor with four blades. Apparently it’s not satire.
- The Knee Defender says it’ll keep the person in front of you from reclining their airline seat into your knees. Maybe I’ll have to pop for one before I fly next. [fark!]
- Finally, continuing the “possibly useful gadgets” theme, it says here the Orgasmatron Puts Tech in Sex for women, getting them to the
one-yard line
by electrically stimulating accupuncture points on their ankles. Apparently some actual touching is still involved to finish the job, but the Slightest Touch®takes a woman to a pre-orgasmic plateau
. Cost? $200. The article also says:No machine will ever replace a person or sexual communication between partners.
Good thing us men-folk aren’t going to be rendered completely useless. [fark!] - Boulder researchers forecast a sizable geomagnetic storm which could mean some extraordinary Aurorae this evening. It might be worth trying to get outside the city lights this evening.
- A List Apart has relaunched, so you can get the news on the latest web-design techniques again. Hopefully they’ll get the archives moved across sometime soon. [zeldman]
- X10 files for Chapter 11. The protocol’s kinda cool (at least in theory–it’s a bit sucky in practice), but the company won’t be missed at all. Sadly, chapter 11 means they’re reorganizing, probably to come up with a more annoying way to advertise so they can pay off the patent fees for the pop-under “technology” they owe money for. [101-280]
- I guess I need to clarify. It wasn’t just the mailman yesterday who’s busy hating. There have been plenty of other episodes lately that have caught my attention. I got verbally slapped around at the bar a couple weeks ago because I’m one o’ them gun nuts (I wasn’t especially looking to talk politics that night, which may have thrown people). Even Dave Winer is saying it’s your obligation to hate Condoleezza Rice because she’s
every bit as nasty as Rumsfeld.
That’s not the Mr. Touchy-Feely California Guy image Dave usually projects at all. I think the main point I’m trying to make is that when people on the left start making folks like Bill O’Reilly look sympathetic, there’s something up, and I don't particularly like it. While that kind of behavior is to be expected from the more “nasty” Republican or right-wing commentators, but when the soft’n’fuzzy, bunny-hugging liberals start doing it (that last is probably the best link of the bunch), it makes me wonder. - Huh. Did you know October 23, 1959 is the birthday of not only Sam Raimi (of Evil Dead fame) but also of Accordion-Guy extrordinaire (sorry, Joey) Weird Al Yankovic? Well, now you do.
- The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1 is an ultra-slim, credit-card-type 5 megapixel digital camera that’ll be coming out in January or so. Mmmmmm.
- Yesterday, as I was walking home from the neighborhood grocery store, I stopped to talk to my mailman for a couple minutes. Lately the talks we’ve been having have been turning to politics, and it’s not a welcome change. He’s still convinced that we were lied to about why there are US soldiers in Iraq, contending that there were no weapons of mass destruction, in spite of the Kay Report saying otherwise.
But the most disturbing thing is the sheer hate people (my mailman included) seem to feel for George W. Bush. Hell, he’s probably not the brightest bulb on the tree, but do you think someone smart would want to be president? Look how well that worked out for Jimmy Carter. I’ve said bad things about both Bushes, as well as Clinton. But I never really hated any of them. I thought the first Bush was ineffectual and wimpy (based on not finishing the job in Iraq the first time mostly) and he backed down on the gun control issue, rather than sticking up for the Second Amendment, like he’d said he was going to.
As for Bill Clinton, the thing that cost me the most respect for him was when he didn’t come out and admit to schtupping Monica Lewinsky. If he’d come out and said something likeI banged the hell outta that gal!
and followed it with a Mel-BrooksianIt’s good to be the king!
I’d have cheered for the guy. So no, I didn’t hate him. He’d probably make a fun drinkin’ buddy for an evening, at least until he headed off with some college-gal, leaving you to explain to Hillary how there was a pretty big line for the men’s room and he’d be back any minute. Then again, she’s probably used to that sort of thing.
Which makes me wonder what it is lately that has people hating politicians. For the most part, it seems that politicians have been isolated enough by the environment that surrounds them that they’re out of touch with reality anyhow. When they show a bit of humanity, it’s encouraging, not contemptible. Ahh, hell. I could go on and bore you further, but geez, Can’t we all just get along? - Because some people seem to be interested: Last night’s neighborhood association meeting was pretty calm. We only finished a few minutes late with the board meeting, and we’d managed to create a committee to deal with the bylaws changes proposed last month, and deal with an above-average number of zoning and planning requests, too. The general membership meeting had more attendees than usual, which was a good thing, and the only real slow point was a discussion about lighting which is being championed by a gal from the Pan-Hellenic council. My take is that the lighting on some of the streets in the neighborhood is pretty bad, even when all the existing streetlights are working, and they’re not all working at the moment. I urged people to report the ones that aren’t, and that’ll be a start. But the big thing that has to happen is that someone needs to lean on this issue, probably for the better part of a year, pestering city government, looking for grants from the state (University Avenue and 4th St SE are state highways, so there’s a different pot of money for improvements on them), and generally working all the angles. It’ll be interesting to see whether someone will have the energy to improve the lighting, or whether, as happened in 1999, a study will be done, and then the student pulling together the results of the study graduates, taking all the data that was gathered with them when they leave the neighborhood.
Also, as an aside: the requirement in the bylaws for a year of residency to be on the board does not discriminate against students. It may discriminate against Greeks, who can’t live in their houses over the summer, but while all Greeks are students, not all students are Greeks and the people who are pushing for more student involvement in the neighborhood association need to remember that. - Inspections of University-area housing to begin this week. My landlord was one of the “lucky” ones who got inspected before the house-fire on 15th, and he’s been busy fixing up his places ever since. A couple months later, he’s getting close to finished, and I think his places were probably pretty average for rental housing in the neighborhood. Might be time to buy Home Depot stock, since a bunch of other landlords are going to be fixing up their places this winter…
- The Tour de Mississippi is three folks biking the river from the headwaters in Itasca down to the salt-water. There’s also a writeup of my friend Scott’s bike trip around Lake Superior . I’m kinda jealous, since I didn’t get much riding done at all this summer.
- And in another rant from the half-bakery: I’ve officially had enough of the Baby Carrot scam, and it’s time to expose the vegetable pushers for the frauds they are. Real baby carrots are things of genuine yumminess, small, tender and oddly-shaped. What stores are selling as baby carrots are simply little chunks cut from bigger carrots and they’re nothing like as good as real baby carrots. I wonder whether I report these fraudsters to the FDA or the FTC.
Here’s an example of slightly more real baby carrots in that they’re at least not chopped up, but the delicious little bites of orange I’m talking about are genuine immature carrots, and they’re just not the same as these imitations that are bred to be smaller.
Brooke Biggs blew the lid off the scandal over a year ago so I guess I’ll just let it drop now. Unless someone wants to form the Truth In Carrot Advertising League, in which case I’ll be happy to send a donation. - So Layne says she’s quitting blogging and flying to Toronto with Lauren (and there’s a small black velvet box involved). So I think to myself that I know someone who’s in Toronto and could be construed as owing me a bit of a favor so in about 45 minutes yesterday morning, I not only figure out why email to kode-fu.com isn’t going through, but I convince Joey that playing some wedding music for Layne and Lauren would be a cool thing. Now I’m waiting to hear back from Layne, but this is the kind of idea that flits through my head sometimes, and then I act on it, making things happen. But it makes me wonder if maybe I’m not living in a half-bakery.
- Dave Winer has a problem with Google’s list of Weblog tools because it doesn’t list Radio Userland. It’s reasonable for him to be upset, but the directory also doesn’t list b2++ or Blogware or probably a couple-dozen other tools that I’m not aware of. Interestingly enough, while I was composing this entry, the Google ad that appeared on my page (yeah, they’re on the internal-only pages, too–I’m too lazy to special-case the template) was for a book on getting started with Radio Userland. What’s the solution? Well, I’d think that someone at Berkman might offer to take over as the maintainer of the directory and get it updated to include tools that have shipped in the past year. [scripting]
- Here’s a field guide for testing if the San Francisco mayoral candidates are human or not. As Scott said, it’s kind of a shame they didn’t have this ready for the recall election. [scottk]
- I drove up to mom’s again yesterday. One of the nice things about this trip in the fall is that I can watch the Changing Colors move southward. Last weekend, the trees at mom’s were bare, but those in the northern suburbs were looking pretty colorful. Yesterday, the trees are bare as far south as Forest Lake, and in theory the colors would be looking pretty good here. But the reality is that about half the trees on my block have already dropped most of their leaves, and the rest are still mostly green. And I still haven’t gotten out to take any pictures of them this year. I suspect I won’t, either.
- The weather lately has been weird and wonderful. Well, maybe not that weird, since I am living in Minnesota, and in the fall, we often get big swings in the weather. But we’ve had days where the temp didn’t get into the 50s (that’s above 10C for you metric sorts) and some days where we were well into the 70s (20s C). Since last week was a mess in my personal life (and I should note that I can only blog about part of the mess, which frustrates me as a writer, and the parts I can’t write about have been a lot more serious than the bits I can), these weather fluctuations came at just the right time. See, I was about out of clean clothes last Wednesday. But a trip to Target for some new underwear and socks (I needed them anyhow) got me through the crisis of the whites, and the weather shifts have allowed me to use both fall/winter and summer clothing stocks, so I managed to put off the laundry for over a full week longer than I normally would have been able to. Of course the eventual reckoning (which happened yesterday) was painful, since nearly every single bit of clothing I own was dirty, but I managed to get four loads of laundry done for the week, and I should be able to find time this week to catch up on the rest. As an added benefit, I think this is going to be the last hurrah for wearing shorts, so I can probably safely pack them away for the winter now, all cleaned and folded in the new storage tubs I also bought.
- Utah soldier leads toy drive for Iraqi children. That’s Chief Wiggles and he’s doing a pretty darned good thing, I think. [instapundit]
- Letter perfect tells of a St. Paul printer who prints things the old way, and is making a good business of it.
- Photo Friday is a weekly photo challenge. Looks relatively cool, and maybe I’ll start checking it to come up with more ideas of things to take pictures of.
- The EFF’s asking folks to Stop the MPAA’s Broadcast Flag! Time to write some letters, and soon. The FCC has promised to act before the end of the month. [boing boing]
- Telemarketers are Ringing around the rule , and this article looks at the techniques they’ll be using to interrupt your day. [fark!]
- I realized yesterday (while recovering from the fun evening I was shown Friday night by Bill, Steph & Tim) that there are now people who are of legal age to drink who weren’t even born when I graduated from high school. Now how the hell did that happen? Musta been while I wasn’t paying attention.
- Finally, I also have what’s hopefully a final update on the Hockey Riot 2003. Eight men are now felons because they were idiots one night back in April.
- Dan Gillmor explains why If Broadcast Flag Passes, You Lose. Say goodbye to time-shifting. Or maybe it’s time to call the Congress-critters. [instapundit]
- According to this Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process, the way most pirated movies reach the internet is from insiders at the production companies leaking a pre-release copy. Seems that it might be more effective to fire a few people, rather than suing 12-year-olds. [cryptogram]
- Danny O’Brien talks about the register. No, not the online tech-news thingie, but rather the three different voices that people tend to have in conversations: secret, private, and public. And how the private voice doesn’t work online, even though it’s the voice that would be appropriate for most blogs. Go read the whole thing. [flutterby]
- Live Free or Try talks about the Free-State Project’s impact on New Hampshire so far (mostly wailing and gnashing of teeth).
- Says here Fake drivers licenses easy to obtain , which means there needs to be some sort of national ID. Maybe having DMV employees actually confiscate fake ID and call the cops (like bars do around here) would be more effective. [cryptogram]
- Ouch. Kids Play classic video games and give commentary on them.
I’m sure everyone who made this game is dead by now.
[fark!] - Says here Panther coming in 14 days, along with an image you have to go look at. It is to laugh. [vowe]
- Ka-Boone! Yanks win, so we don’t have to worry about either Boston or the Cubs winning an End of the World Series. It’s interesting how the plays that changed the tone of the game happened with five outs remaining both last night and during the Cubs’ game six. [press-patch]
- This long article on Modern Flirting seems to long for earlier days. [fark!]
- BarBitches.com offers a different perspective on Etiquette Advice for Bars and Hook-Ups (and probably more practical tips). [accordionguy]
- Courtesy of Modern Drunkard Magazine: Which Rat Pack Member Are You? It tell’s me I’m Dino. Huh!
- After almost three hours meeting with folks who are part of the group opposing historic designation (among other things) yesterday evening, I came home and watched the remnants of the Marlins-Cubs game. The Cubbies were up, and all seemed to be going well until the Marlins capitalized in The Inning. Sheesh. Oh well, at least the chances of the world ending because the Cubs and Red Sox met in the World Series are diminished. Then again, the way life has been going lately, the pocky-clips is sounding like it might be a pretty good thing.
- One of the things that became painfully clear at the meeting last night was that most of the students (greeks) involved in the Coalition for Non-Profit Student Housing have no idea of how our neighborhood association works or what it does.
- One example is the NSP Relicensing relicensing process. I’ve been involved in that process since (at least) sometime in late 2000. I’ve written multiple letters to FERC, gone to dozens of meetings, and spent hundreds of hours on the process. The only power the neighborhood association really has in the process is due to me (and Ted) having a consistent message and repeating it again and again for over three years. A single letter may have had some effect, but without years of follow-up, it would have been for naught when negotiations between Xcel and the Park Board broke down.
- Similarly, the Bicycle Path 5-year Planning process at the city began in April 2001. I’ve been involved for most of that time (though less lately) with the city planners, trying to get some sane bike-paths around our area. Sometime next summer, the reconstruction of 5th St SE will be done, and will still include the bike lane that’s always been there, even though it doesn’t meet all the city guidelines, and so was maybe going to be removed. The missing link in the bike paths along East River Road will be completed, too. While these are things other folks have been pushing too, I like to think that my showing up at all those meetings helped push matters in the right direction. These are just two examples of things I’ve been involved in personally. Multiply that by a couple dozen active members and we actually get some good things done, but none of them happen as the result of a simple vote, which is an important point the Coalition seems to be missing.
- MSA criticizes council historic vote, weighing in on the side of the Greeks. I think it’s amazing how up-in-arms people are over this historic designation. We’ve already got a number of houses in the neighborhood that have been designated historic, and their owners usually are happy to have been chosen. Yes, it means an extra step when you want to do exterior renovations, but it also means that someone’s watching out for the houses, and they won’t get butchered by a developer with no sense of the history of the neighborhood (or just doesn’t give a rat’s ass).
- The University Student Legal Service and Housing and Residential Life Agencies to ask U to delist landlords who receive more than three citations from the city. That means that Jim Eischens and Joe Welp will no longer be listed at the housing office as soon as these changes go into effect. It’s a real shame that it took a house-fire where people died to get these changes made.
- Steph has some comments on other Neighborhood developments, this time in the housing market. Personally, I hope the condo-market in my neighborhood gets overbuilt. Maybe it’ll mean I’ll be able to find a place I can afford that I’ll actually want to live in.
- Steph is shaking her head like an old person over the situation with the greeks and historic designation. She’s expressed the situation better than I have, and also explained why what’s going on is bad. Thanks, Steph!
- Jim stumbled into a band on the web:
I’ve actually heard of Rondellus before from somewhere, possibly from Karl, who shared the idea of doing a Punk Gregorian Chant band sometime back in the 80s. Yep. Here’s the link, and it says I found it on Fark!. [jim]Instruments played include Harp, Lute, Hurdy Gurdy, Bag pipe, and fiddle. Yep, it was obvious, they had to be a Black Sabbath Medieval Tribute Band.
Ok, maybe it wasn’t really my first thought, but that is what it is. At the very least listen to the song sample of their cover of War Pigs. Oh, and you can buy The Rondellus’ CD from CD Baby.
- Zimmer issues apology and four players were fined for Saturday’s fracas in the Yankees-Red Sox game. Pedro Martinez got the heaviest fine, which seems right.
- I drove up to mom’s yesterday. It was an okay day, but it brought home a few things, and since I’m light on linkage today, I figured I’d share.
- The leaves are already gone from many of the trees up at mom’s. It’s not even a hundred miles north of here, but it’s definitely autumn. I haven’t been out and about enough lately to have noticed more than the fact that the tree in my front yard had started changing color. In her yard, there’s only one tree that’s still mostly green, and most are already bare. It’s autumn, and I still haven’t had the vacation I promised myself I’d take this summer. In fact, there’s a lot I haven’t gotten done that I wanted to before the snow hit this year, and I’m resigned to leaving a lot of it undone.
- I’m trying to find a house I can buy that will hold me, and possibly have space for mom, too. She’s not getting any younger, and while she’s not ready to move off the farm just yet, I need to start planning for that day.
- There’s also the neighborhood association stuff. The greeks who are upset about historic designation of their houses have made a ton of extra work for us, and the normal projects I’ve been working on that help the neighborhood have been getting ignored. Thanks guys.
- I’ve been pondering vacation, and the list of places I’ve thought about include: Poland, Austria (that first picture is where I spent a year of high-school), and Tokyo. More likely, I’ll end up with something within the US, since I don’t know when I’ll be leaving on vacation, and it’s tough to book overseas travel on no notice. Bleh.
- I’m pretty seriously burned out on just about everything right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if I took a break from posting these things for a while, since I seem to be running low on material.
- But hey! Metal butter knives are making a comeback aboard U.S. airliners and you’re allowed to carry corkscrews and nail-clippers again. Woo? [press-patch]
- Council declares houses historic and there is little the coalition can do aside from suing the city. And raising a stink at our neighborhood association.
- Dinkytown quiet after Gophers loss. No riots. And probalby fewer drunken idiots in Dinkytown than normal. Of course that means they were farther afield, so I got to hear plenty of them wandering the street in front of my house all night, both Friday and Saturday nights. [strib]
- Huh. If I’d known Joey and I were an item, I woulda wore my suit or something. How very strange. And I’m pretty sure we’ve never even been in the same city, let alone met in person.
- Declan McCullagh’s (brief) career as an ISP, in which the FBI tries to subpoena his reporters notes under a law that applies to ISPs. I don’t exactly understand why reporters should have more rights than ordinary people, though. I think we should all have a right to keep our notes private.
- Wired News: Shift-Key Case Rouses DMCA Foes, and there’s a decent chance the publicity from it will help fix the law.
- Power plant’s subsidies get new scrutiny and it’s going to be a fine boondoggle for the Arrowhead. I find myself wondering whether the eminent domain parts can at least be struck down. [press-patch]
- As for yesterday’s Freak show in Boston, I’ve never really thought Zimmer was a cuddly old man, and while he and Manny Ramirez both overreacted, Pedro Martinez did look like he could use a slap to the head after throwing at Garcia. Clemens, in spite of his reputation for being a headhunter, looked like he kept his cool better than just about anyone else out there. If throwing at Garcia was an attempt to take away Clemens ability to pitch inside (scroll down to the section labelled The Rocket and The Prince), it failed miserably. The umpires (correctly) continued to let Clemens pitch inside, and all the whole thing seemed to do was fire up the Yankees. I’m still pulling for the Red Sox because of the Saints connections (Millar played in St. Paul in 1993 and I met him at Gabe’s one night and Jason Varitek is the older brother of Justin, who I talked with a lot in 2000), but games like yesterday’s make it a lot harder to root for the Red Sox. I dunno. I think nearly everyone involved behaved badly, but it’ll take a lot more to get me to cheer for the Yankees. [scottk]
- A while back, I bought a couple hones, a guide, and a book from Razor Edge Systems. Well, I’ve been futzing around with them while I’ve been watching baseball in the evenings, and my pocket knife is now sharp enough to shave with (and I’ve got a small bald spot on my knee to prove it–it has been, after all, shorts weather the past few days). Now it’s time to start in on the cooking knives, I think. It’s not that they’re exactly dull, but I’m pretty sure they need some touching-up. The most useful thing I bought? The book, followed closely by the guide. I’m pretty good at hand-sharpening knives, but using the guide made it a lot easier to get the edge Just Right.
- The Little Pound Coin that wanted to be a Million takes a look at eBay. A pound coin (worth about US$1.60) was offered for auction on eBay. Nothing special about it, but the auction got shut down at over a million pounds.
- Product Liability Lawsuits Are New Threat to Microsoft and to the software business in general. It’ll be a very different landscape if companies that sell software are subject to product liability laws. [nyt]
- Says here
If you only see one Elvis vs. The Mummy movie this year, make it Bubba Ho-Tep
. Well heck, I’m sold. - FCC says it’s okay to say “Fuck” (PDF) as long as you’re not referring to intercourse. [fark!]
- “Final defendant” convicted for hockey riot. Hopefully tonight won’t bring a number of new people needing trials.
- New spam fighting weapon. Looks interesting to me, anyway. The only problem is that you need new mail-servers, but I expect once a few of them get switched over, we’ll be in good shape. [bill]
- Spam Fighters Turn to Identifying Legitimate E-Mail at the behest of banks, travel companies and online stores whose voluminous email often looks like spam. But all the
solutions
they talk about are based on a model of the internet with centralized servers, rather than a peer-to-peer network. And Verisign is one of the leaders. Makes me pretty dubious. - High-tech targets bad bar customers in Vancouver, B.C. They’ll scan your driver license and take your picture. If you cause trouble in a bar, you’ll be blacklisted. If you don’t want Big Brother knowing where and when you’re drinking, you’ll probably need to try another city.
- Juggling with Packets describes a way to use the internet to store data.
- Federal Court Throws Out Minnesota VoIP Regulation. So vonage isn’t a phone company. Quite. [accordionguy]
- Under new bill, rioters would lose financial aid. That’ll address the issue of students who are rioting, but not the folks who aren’t students (it sounds like it broke down about 50-50 for the ones who were arrested in Mankato). Dunno if it’s a good step or not.
- They say ‘Alcohol anarchy’ fueled Mankato riot. But the quote I like is:
Hopefully police and prosecutors will throw the book at those involved. I was encouraged to see felony convictions for the riot here in April, but so far, all the arrests in Mankato seem to have been for misdemeanors.It’s sad partially because nothing too severe is going to happen to them, so they won’t realize how much their actions have affected people and the city.
- Rioters don’t appreciate the value of a dollar says Soucheray. He’s got a point there. [press-patch]
- Student riot spectators aren’t blameless, police say, which is a point I made back in April:
It’s nice to see that someone else has figured this out. [strib]I also heard a fair amount of complaining from people who got maced for
doing nothing
and my response has been to askDid you leave when the police were dealing with the riot and told everyone to leave?
- U plans for risk of riots this coming weekend, and probably for Homecoming too, which falls on Halloween this year. It’ll be interesting to see how it works. [press-patch]
- City orders students out of over-occupied rental house owned by Jim Eischens. That doesn’t surprise me much. There are an awful lot of houses in the area where more than three unrelated people are living, which violates the zoning for the area. I bet I could name five houses on my street without even thinking hard.
- City should pay historic designation costs is an editorial in the Daily weighing in on the issue that could end up tearing my neighborhood association apart. The thing is that the group of students who are opposing historic designation have decided that if they take over the neighborhood association, they can use it to fight the city. They seem to be getting some pretty poor advice from the lawyer who’s “helping” them. He’s the same lawyer who was behind an attempt in 1989 to take over the neighborhood association, so I suspect his motives are less than pure.
- Last night I finally saw the the mouse I mentioned yesterday. Heard the scrabbling and could actually pinpoint the sound. The mouse has been eating some roasted barley that’s sitting in a beer kit I’ve had sitting in the kitchen for a while. So I set a mousetrap in the escape route, and about two hours later, heard it go off. But no mouse in the trap. Drat! I reset a trap with no bait (but right where he’s gotta run if he’s using that path) just in case the critter’s afraid of the scent of peanut butter now (there are a couple other traps still set with peanut butter, too). The hunt continues.
- Summer makes a comeback in town this week. I’m enjoying the weather, but this is one where I think I’d enjoy it a lot more if I didn’t have so many things on my to-do list. Yeah, I made some time to get outside yesterday, but I felt guilty about it at the time.
- U.S. Report Fails to Link Gun Laws to Violent Crime, or suicides, or firearms accidents. So why exactly do we have “gun control” laws at all? [instapundit]
- A-B drops support of Holden over guns. It appears to be the first time in quite a while that Anheuser-Busch has taken a firm stand on any issue, rather than supporting candidates on both sides of the aisle. Apparently the ability for people to carry a concealed firearm is important to August Busch III. Kudos to BUD for taking a stand. [endwar]
- I think I might have to buy this T-shirt celebrating Diversity.
- Then again, who needs a gun if you’ve got a Trunk Monkey?
- On yet another hand, this Fun Ammo looks like it might be more interesting than a Trunk Monkey. So many toys. So little time. Of course, the neighbors would not approve.
- Patriot Act requiring people to provide detailed personal information to banks, which is not only costing banks extra money, but requiring a lot of extra information from people opening new accounts. Yeah, it’s a provision of the act that’s just going into effect now, and once again people are surprised by how intrusive it is. [endwar]
- Says here It’s my world. That being the case, there are a few changes I’d like to make…
- Violence Erupts After Minnesota State, Mankato Homecoming Saturday night. They lost in the homecoming football game, and had a riot. How original. Here’s the Mankato Dept. of Public Safety Press Release. 45 face charges in riot near MSU from the Press-patch, Riots shake Minnesota State University, Mankato from the Strib, and Riot Erupts Near MSU is the story from the local TV station. The Top Stories - Minnesota State University, Mankato page has more, including a statement from the President of MSU, in which he blames alcohol. As with the riots here last April, the problem isn’t alcohol. The problem is assholes who want to riot. If alcohol is involved, it just makes them drunken assholes.
- The Twins loss yesterday was mostly due to One Bad Inning, but you could just as easily blame their inability to hit the Yankees pitching during the whole series. I might write up something bigger about the Twins before the snow flies, but don’t count on it. I like the team and all, but MLB has lost me as a real fan. Between Asshat-In-Chief Selig jacking things around so he can make more money on his team in Milwaukee and Fox not being able to decide which game they wanted to run in primetime yesterday so Twins fans didn’t know until Saturday night when they needed to get to the Metrodome on Sunday, I’ve found little to like. Yes, the baseball itself is good, but I don’t have fun following a team like I do with the Saints. Hell, the one guy I cheered for most was ex-Saint Kevin Millar, who’s playing for the Red Sox. [press-patch]
- California votin’ takes a look at the electonic voting machines that will be used in Tuesday’s elections in California. Guess what, they’re junk. If they were slot-machines, they wouldn’t be able to be certified. [instapundit]
- Dave Barry asks So what’s their hang-up? See, the American Teleservices Association got miffed when people called them, and shut off their phone. They’ve got a new phone number and Barry made it available. Meanwhile, on the AspenAir front, the Attorney General is useless. AspenAir insists that they have the right to pester people, and the Better Business Bureau wrote a strongly worded letter. But I’m sure they’d appreciate a call at 651-982-2626.
- Microsoft Sued for Weak Security. I wonder why it took so long.
- Lately I’ve been hearing small scrabbling sounds around the apartment. Initially it would just be late and night, and I’d be partway asleep, so I wasn’t sure, but after sitting around watching baseball games yesterday, and hearing noises a couple dozen times during the day, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a House Mouse. Guess I’ll have to make a trip to get some traps later today. I really should know to stock up earlier in the year, since it’s every year about this time that a few of the critters make their way inside to get away from the cold.
- Friday night was Oktoberfest with the PeTA gang at Gasthof zur Gemütlichkeit. And as we approached the 11pm cutoff for beer out in the tent, people started realizing they had too many tokens left and weren’t going to be able to drink that much beer before it was time to leave. So I found myself with a bunch of extra tokens at the end, and naturally decided that I wasn’t going to let any of them go to waste. Then after getting home before midnight, I decided I wasn’t done for the day, and had a few more beers.
Saturday meant getting up at 8am and getting a few hours of work done, but it went fairly smoothly. Then it was time to watch the Twins lose, and start cleaning the house for the evening poker game. Two sacks of trash, four bags of recycling, and three bundles of flattened cardboard boxes later (I always get way behind on the cardboard recycling), there was at least room for folks to sit around the table and play cards. I’ve got a couple storage tubs filled with videotapes and books that I need to sort, and a ton of laundry to do, but the place doesn’t look like quite as much of a pit as it used to.
Today, I was planning on heading up to Mom’s to help her go through a bunch of papers she wanted help sorting, but I’m going to beg off and just take it easy. If I’m feeling super-motivated, I might do a load of laundry, but if I don’t take some time off today, I’ll be worthless for the work-week tomorrow, and it’s looking like another week full of things that could distract me from work. I think I need to be at least a little fresh for it. - Scott (and Mark)’s Double-header, guest entry describes two friends of mine having an adventure in which they see two major league playoff games in a single day, paying less than face value for the tickets to a sold-out game. I’m gonna hafta try going to a ballgame with Mark sometime to learn his tricks. [scottk]
- Always know the score / Sharp eyes and pencils track every play. A nice article about scoring baseball games. Me, I’m more of the have a beer and visit with people persuasion. [scottk]
- Meanwhile, the Twins are Back to the abyss after losing to the Yankees yesterday. Gotta win today.
- Free State Project Picks New Hampshire. Now to just get another fifteen thousand people to sign up and to start moving.
- It’s a Question of power on Iron Range. And apparently, there’s going to be a new power plant that nobody wants or needs. Looks like quite a pork-barrel. [press-patch]
- Time As A Luxury Item is an essay from the A Year in Cornwall blog. The blog is only a couple weeks old, but it looks like good reading. And this essay touches a nerve with me. One of the reasons I like running my own business (most of the time) is that being self-employed lets me trade off hourly rate for cool work, and rather than paying for gas to commute to the office, I get to spend that money on computers for my home-office. But most important of all is the fact that none of the companies I’ve ever worked for would allow me to work ¾ time for ¾ of the pay, and I wanted more time for me. I don’t necessarily use that extra time as well as I could, and there are other headaches that go with running a business, but I think it’s worth it. And as a bonus, I’m providing work to other folks who want to make the same trade-offs.
- Back in July, I wrote up some notes on secure connectivity using SSH tunnelling. Well, it was time to update that, since a friend pointed me at SSH Tunnel Manager which puts a friendly face on the command lines.
- VeriSign calls halt to .com detours because ICANN tightened the screws on them. It may only be temporary, but it’s good news for now.
- Wires crossed over do-not-call laws, both at the state and federal levels. And while I sympathize with the small businessment who fear they won’t be able to stay in business without telemarketing, I think they need to find another way to market their businesses than cold-calling people who’ve signed up for the list and thereby said they don’t want to be called.
- Hey, the Winners of the Ig® Nobel Prize for 2003 have been announced. [fark!]
- Vibrating shoes may keep elderly folks from falling down. No word on whether it’ll help drunks. Any volunteers for some experiments? [fark!]
- My brief affair with the Blackberry 7230 and how I came back home to Danger. With my hiptop being just about year old (so my one-year plan is about up), I’ve been wondering about a new phone. I’ve been thinking about it pretty hard, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m not going to just drop the cell-phone entirely. About the only time I carry it anymore (the Danger’s more weight than I want to haul around) is when I’m going to meet someone and figure I might need to call them to connect up. Other than that, it sits at home, and because I’m not going from one cell to another, T-Mobile throttles my connection down and I don’t have a data connection most of the time. There’s a lot of promise there, but T-Mobile is strangling the hiptop. [gizmodo]
- Huh. The JB1 camera looks kinda cool. It’s small enough, at least. Not very good quality, but size matters. [gizmodo]
- F.C.C. to Enforce No Call Registry. There are still some kinks to be worked out, but it sounds again like the do not call list will still happen.
- FCC Begins To Receive Complaints About Calls from people who have signed up for the do not call list.
- The Strib has an Editorial: Do not call/The right to be left in peace. Yeah, I’d be happy with a do not call list that told charities and others not to call me, too. In fact, one of the surest ways for a charity get nothing from me is to start calling me, rather than just sending stuff out in the mail. [strib]
- Despite protests, committee passes historic designation and for once, I agree with Lisa Goodman. Coalition leader opposes historic designation explores the role Lynn Swon has had in the whole issue.
- Twins top Yankees, 3-1 and Twins’ small ball frustrates Yankees fans and if you’re interested in even more details, the Twins Geek has the story, natch.
- Blame game on safety follows shootings in the Hennepin County Government Center. I took KSTP reporter Todd Baer to task via email for his story on the effect of the “guns banned” signs last night, and after an email exchange, I still don’t like the story, but I’m suspecting that he was given a tough assignment. Mitch Berg has his take on the Shooting at the Government Center, too. Go read Mitch’s bit. He makes most of the same points I want to, and has already written them up. [strib]
- Hey, go watch Michael Moore’s Call to Arms. It’s an amusing bit of filmmaking, no matter whether you agree with him or not. But he did consent to be interviewed by someone with opinions different from his, and the result is good viewing. [instapundit]
- Spam: This Time It’s Personal tells the story of Andy Markley, whose domain name was used in thousands of spams. [boing boing]
- Seventh defendant sentenced in hockey riot, for trying to set a car on fire last April. Yet another who wasn’t of legal drinking age.
- The Free State Project will be announcing which state is the winner today. [doc]
- Last Month
31. October, 2003 - Happy Halloween
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 31, 2003 October 31 in History
30. October, 2003 - Joe Bob - Aurora
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 30, 2003 October 30 in History
29. October, 2003 - saving what?
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 29, 2003 October 29 in History
28. October, 2003 - Fun City, USA!
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That’s all I have today. I spent yesterday getting back on track with work, and I’m expecting that the rest of this week will mean light-linkage, as I try to make up for lost time in the work-world.
Weather in Minneapolis for October 28, 2003 October 28 in History
27. October, 2003 - Homecoming Week
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 27, 2003 October 27 in History
26. October, 2003 - Fish Win
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Yes, I woke up an hour early this morning. The extra hour means extra stuff for you to read this fine Sunday morning. Aren’t you feeling lucky?
Weather in Minneapolis for October 26, 2003 October 26 in History
25. October, 2003 - useful gadgets? maybe
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 25, 2003 October 25 in History
24. October, 2003 - lights in the sky
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 24, 2003 October 24 in History
23. October, 2003 - Happy Birthday Weird Al
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 23, 2003 October 23 in History
22. October, 2003 - neighborhood doings, bikes, carrots
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 22, 2003 October 22 in History
21. October, 2003 - life in the half-bakery
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 21, 2003 October 21 in History
20. October, 2003 - changing seasons
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 20, 2003 October 20 in History
19. October, 2003 - odds & ends
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 19, 2003 October 19 in History
18. October, 2003 - It’s not pirates
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 18, 2003 October 18 in History
17. October, 2003 - feeling better
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Sorry for the dreary tone around here lately. After taking some time yesterday afternoon to sit at AAA and start planning one possible vacation, then coming home to watch some baseball, and then The Usual Suspects with a (female) friend (who’s not averse to a little cuddling, and yes, I turned off the baseball game in the eighth while it was tied, but after it looked like Boston was going to blow the game), I’m feeling a bit better about life. I’m still behind schedule on multiple fronts, but I’ve decided that some non-essential items on the to-do list just aren’t going to get done, and that makes me feel better.
Weather in Minneapolis for October 17, 2003 October 17 in History
16. October, 2003 - I got nuthin’
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It’s been a hectic kind of week, with distractions from discovering I have yet more forms to fill out and money to send to the state of Wisconsin (but really, I’ve nearly got everything set up for the employee I’ve had there since the first of the year, at least until I find there’s some other requirement I’ve missed), to some legal matters that must get sorted out ASAP — from watching the Cubbies get eliminated in the NLCS to getting more phone calls about neighborhood stuff when I thought I’d be able to leave that alone until next week. The end result is that I don’t have any links for you today, and I’m not sure when I will.
In order to try and keep myself a little bit organized, I’ve taken to making to-do lists with everything that I have to do during the day on them (including eat lunch, for example), and in three days of doing that, I’ve already got a half-dozen things that needed to get done that haven’t, which have carried over to today. Among the things that have been getting carried over for multiple days, find cool things for the website lives right behind get some paying work done. And at 7am today, I’m already wondering if I'm going to get to those today and thinking probably not
.
But hey, it could be worse. At least I’m not that guy in the stands in Chicago. He (along with the Cubs’ Alex Gonzalez) has joined an elite club, right along with Bill Buckner.
Weather in Minneapolis for October 16, 2003 October 16 in History
15. October, 2003 - what a tuesday
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 15, 2003 October 15 in History
14. October, 2003 - neighborhood, music, baseball
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 14, 2003 October 14 in History
13. October, 2003 - the autumn of my discontent
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 13, 2003 October 13 in History
12. October, 2003 - all quiet in Dinkytown
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 12, 2003 October 12 in History
11. October, 2003 - taking the day off
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That is all.
Weather in Minneapolis for October 11, 2003 October 11 in History
10. October, 2003 - Sharp!
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 10, 2003 October 10 in History
9. October, 2003 - it’s all just bits
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 9, 2003 October 9 in History
8. October, 2003 - and now, in local news…
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 8, 2003 October 8 in History
7. October, 2003 - great wide hunter outsmarted by mouse
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 7, 2003 October 7 in History
6. October, 2003 - riot in Mankato
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 6, 2003 October 6 in History
5. October, 2003 - a day of rest (and baseball)
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 5, 2003 October 5 in History
4. October, 2003 - time is a luxury, alright
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 4, 2003 October 4 in History
3. October, 2003 - Time for a new phone?
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 3, 2003 October 3 in History
2. October, 2003 - late
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Well, I know this won’t be a very satisfying update, but I’ve gotta get on with work, rather than trying to write about what happened last night (and as Steph sagely points out: If you can’t say nuthin’ nice, don’t say nuthin at all
). And since I wasn’t home to surf the web last night, and spent this morning sleeping, there’s no picks for the day, either. Sorry. Life intrudes.
Weather in Minneapolis for October 2, 2003 October 2 in History
1. October, 2003 - Twins lead series 1-0
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Weather in Minneapolis for October 1, 2003 October 1 in History