April 2004 full listing

Update, 12:45pm

• I guess I did have some writing in me today. I wrote up my experience with DirecTV customer service as I was trying to pay my end-of-month bills while eating lunch. The short version is that after spending about a half-hour on the phone with them, I’m not a happy customer.

It’s not that I’m depressed or busy or anything horribly noteworthy today. I just don’t have anything worth linking to. Sorry. Seeya next month.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 30, 2004     April 30 in History

• Last night Jim & I headed over to Ruminator Books to hear Jim Bouton talk about life, baseball, and his new book. We both bought copies and got to shake his hand, but didn’t stick around to get them signed. He’s a good speaker, and if you get a chance to hear him, I’d recommend it. They had free beer, too! Given that the Saints’ training camp opens next Wednesday, this felt like a perfect kickoff to the season to me, especially since I got to talk to Bouton briefly about his plans for his minor league team.
• Before seeing Bouton, we stopped at Huong Sen Restaurant for dinner. Excellent grub, and we didn’t even know it was well-rated. And no, we didn’t get eggrolls, since we were in a hurry and just wanted dinner as quickly as possible. I expect I’ll head back there sometime when I’ve got more time to enjoy dinner.
• The bid for the Saints’ Professional Baseball Player for a Day auction is up to $5400, and the bidding ends on Monday. I’ll try to remember to check on what the final price ends up being.
• If you want a cheaper way to get some Northern League at bats, the Saints are also holding Open Tryouts on Monday, May 3rd. Report to the stadium by 8am if you’re interested. Bring your own glove, spikes and bat. George Tsamis, the skipper, figures he might find a couple good local players who can make the team.
• This year, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is the same week as Java One, and that means that hotels are going to be a little tight. So Wolf Rentzsch put together a WWDC 2004 Hotel Brain Dump that some folks who read this might find useful.
• In HOV Me Do, Evan talks about HOV Lanes and recycling from a libertarian perspective, and ends by saying that any pay-for-convenience plan would probably be something he’d reject on other grounds, because of the tracking required. Hey, why not just a plain toll booth at the start. If you want to use the 160mph ultra-bahn, you have to first stop at the toll booth (where they eyeball your car to make sure nothing’s going to fall off), take your $300 and then let you in. Okay, that’s maybe a little too extreme to work, but I’d drop a couple twenties for a 90mph bypass that took me from somewhere around Madison, WI to Michigan without having to spend a couple hours idling in Chicago (just to name the first example that popped into my brain). [101-280]
• Finally, just in case your social calendar isn’t already full for this evening, the Auto Body Experience is playing at the Uptown Bar and Cafe. They’re first up at 9:30 or so. I have no idea about the other bands, but hey, there’s no cover, so what the heck.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 29, 2004     April 29 in History

The weather people have been saying it’s supposed to be in the 80s today, followed by possible snow this weekend. Completely nutty weather around here lately, and I noticed yesterday that it isn’t doing the hops I put outside much good. While some of the longer vines have died back, there’s new growth replacing them already, so I figure they’ll probably be okay, but they definitely look worse for the wear. And with the warm temps, I’ll probably be tempted to head outside and put more plants out too early, but I think I’ll be able to resist today. I’ve got a bunch of work that needs doing, and I expect that will keep me occupied.

• Oh hey, today’s the first birthday of the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act. Noon party on the steps of the Capitol in St. Paul. Maybe I’ll manage to squeeze some time out of my work-schedule today to head over there. There’s a counter-rally by Citizens for a Safer Minnesota at 11:30. From a comment on the post:

  Permits issued: 17,249
  Permit holder road rage shootings: 0
  Parking space shootings: 0
  State Fair shootings: 0
  Finding out that law-abiding citizens are… well, law abiding: Priceless.

• Jim Bouton is Still pitching, and will be at Ruminator Books in St. Paul tonight signing books, talking about stadium politics, and receiving the Dave Moore Award from Elysian Fields Quarterly for his new book. It’s $5 to attend, but that’s refunded if you buy one of his books. [press-patch]
• A reader points to The Raw Story, calling it a new liberal alternative to Drudge. I dunno. I took a look at it and I’m not really that impressed. Then again, I tend to have a bias against sites that put everything on a black background, unless they’re photography sites where the pictures look better that way. But what the hell, I’ll link to it and let you decide.
• The U of M now provides free blogs for students, staff. They’ve developed their own software based on Movable Type and have room set aside on a server for about a thousand blogs. [daily]
• The Midtown Greenway Coalition’s annual meeting this year (it’s next wednesday) will attempt to Bring the Streetcars Back! and it’s open to the public. It sounds like an interesting event, but it’s on the same day that the Saints open training camp at Midway, and I’m expecting to be pretty fully booked that day.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 28, 2004     April 28 in History

Last night was a night of many beers at the Sporty. Scott and Kat had invited me out, and who was I to say no? The end result was that I was running late this morning, and didn’t get around to posting this until well into the afternoon.

Also on the way home last night, I got to see the neighborhood skunk. I said “Hello” and it boogied. That’s about how interactions with skunks should go.

• Sanford points out Econ Technologies’ Portraits & Prints. This is a product much like one we thought about doing. It lets you easily lay out multiple photos on a single sheet of paper, with an eye toward conserving paper and making it easy to get standard size photos out.
• Jim’s not sure, but he thinks the Modern Drunkard Convention in Las Vegas would be a really bad idea. Me, I’m not sure either, but luckily, it’s only a few weeks out and it doesn’t look like there’s a cheap flight available, plus I’m pretty busy through the rest of May. [jim]
• The Saints are running an interesting promotion: Bidder Up!. The current bid is pushing $3000. I guess someone really wants to face some Northern League pitching. If it were me, I think I’d have to question balls and strikes and get tossed after I struck out, but that’s not three grand worth of fun. [jim]
• I’ve added the Bayon Curry Chicken recipe to my recipes page. It’s good food, and if you make up a batch, I’d appreciate an invitation. Also note, that if you make it correctly, all the colors seem just a little bit brighter after eating a bowl of it. I like that in a food.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 27, 2004     April 27 in History

Well, the weekend didn’t turn out to be a total loss, but once again, I entered the weekend with grand plans, and find myself on a Monday morning with quite a to-do list remaining. It’s not all bad, though. A couple of the things I left un-done are normal administrivia tasks that I generally do on Monday mornings, anyhow. There’s just a little more than usual on today’s list.

• Yesterday, Scott McGerik wrote about seeing a Northern Flicker. That’s the bird I saw last week that I didn’t know what it was. Cool! I post something here, and the web answers my question. [scott mcgerik]
• The Idiot Villager talks about Bush’s God vice and how it hurts his politics. That’s part of the problem I have wiith GWB, but his free-spending ways don’t help, either. Aaron suggests we vote for Mr. Jackson Kirk Grimes.
• Wales House is a home for visiting scholars in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood. Wales House is one of the places that I recommend people check into if they’re going to be visiting Minneapolis and want to be near the U. It’s a nice place, convenient to the U and downtown, and relatively cheap. [daily]
• Jim has some notes on Synchronicity and the 1934 Teamsters Strike, and tells where there are some photos commemorating one of the more brutal strikes in Minneapolis history. [jim]
• Reed pointed to the coverage of Nascar Ballet, in which a Roanoke ballet company has adapted the nation’s most popular racing series to the stage. It’s some strange stuff, but I like this piece which says it Feels like April Fool’s Month. My interest in NASCAR Ballet? None whatsoever, but Reed pointed it out, and there you are. [reed]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 26, 2004     April 26 in History

• In spite of all my big plans for yesterday, I didn’t get a whole lot done. I went out looking for carpeting, and ended up finding a decent price for it, installed, even. But I’m stuck on the color. I think I’d rather have a blue carpet in the bedroom, but something more neutral is probably a better bet for resale value. And I was a space-monkey and forgot to bring along the paint samples, so I don’t even know if they blues they have will work. I’m looking for colors that will work with this print of the New York Central Building, or Hokusai Katsushika’s The Great Wave (and as I find an online reference for that, I notice that Van Gogh’s Starry Night is a similar palette). Or rather, I guess I’m looking now for colors that will work with the bedding I bought last weekend, which feels like it’ll work with those prints. In any case, that’s about all I got done yesterday. I’m going to have to try to do better today, I think.
• I was also up late last night reading. The book I was reading that kept me up late a couple nights last week was Point of Impact, by the way. I liked it enough that I ordered a few more Stephen Hunter books off the web. But while I wait for them to arrive, I’m reading The Return of Santiago and staying up too late again. But I discovered that I burn through about 100 pages per hour when I’m in this reading mode. I think that’s pretty fast, and it definitely means I’m spending more on books than usual this month.
• In a sneak attack on the most common image format, Forgent Sues Over JPEG Patent, after having held the patent submerged since they acquired it in 1997. There’s some discussion at the JPEG site, too. There’s more at newsforge, too. Enough to convince me that Forgent is abusing the patent process and trying to cash in in the six months remaining before their patents expire. [wired and slashdot]
• I’ve hammered the NRA a couple times lately. I’m far from the first. In The NRA and Freedom of Speech or Do as I say, not as I do, which is from 1996, basically the same complaints are raised against them. I knew about these complaints before, but I think it’s time to raise a stink about it again. This is an election year, and George W. Bush has not been a friend to gun-owners, his administration has not been a friend to liberty, and the Republican Party does not represent freedom. This is a good time to point that out. If it means that some Republican candidates lose elections, so be it. If they’re RINOs like Arlen Specter, it’s no real loss anyhow.
• The Twins waiting game is costly and is losing them goodwill at a pretty rapid pace. I think they’re asking way too much for showing what little content they have on Victory Sports One. It might be worth over $2 per month if they televised the games from all of their minor-league affiliates, but that would probably add too much to their costs. Today’s game will be the eleventh game of the season not televised in Minneapolis and St. Paul. [press-patch]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 25, 2004     April 25 in History

• I took the Which American City Are You? quiz this morning. Apparently, I’m Cleveland.

  You are blue collar and Rock n Roll. You Work hard and party harder.

  
  
  For some reason, that makes me feel more like Drew Carey than ever.
• In an addition to my comments from the bus-driver yesterday, I should also point out that Metro Transit reduced the number of stops during the strike to save money according to the signs along the routes. It was kind of a drag to head down to the bus stop for the first time in over a month, only to discover that the stop is no longer there. When I mentioned it to the driver, she said that most drivers are still picking people up at the removed stops, but that’s just one of many changes we should expect over the next few months.
• This summer Como Zoo will start soliciting donations from visitors. It’ll still be a free zoo (one of only four in large metro areas), but there will be volunteers at the gates to ask people for money. Seems okay to me, as long as the nagging isn’t too intrusive. I tend to give money at the exhibits I like for example, rather than at the front gate. [strib]
• Here’s more on the Chris Cox NRA Speech, blasting the NRA for pushing for a priviledge to carry, rather than a right to carry, and the NRA-ILA for actually being pro-gun-control. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks It’s a shame though: it’d be nice if the NRA were on our side. [endwar]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 24, 2004     April 24 in History

It’s another morning where I overslept. I was up late reading again. This has actually been kind of fun. I’ve got a decent fiction book that I’ve been pouring most of my spare time (and some not-so-spare time) into. It’s not a great book, but it’s unrelated to anything I’m doing for work, and is, as they say, a page-turner. Beats the hell out of watching the tube. I think that even though I’ve got a stack of almost a dozen books in my “to-read” pile, I’m going to try and stock up on more brain-candy fiction. The other things in the pile are things I think I ought to read, and I need more things that are just fun to read in the mix.

• I don’t suppose this should be a surprise to anyone in the age of photoshop, but a picture is no longer worth a thousand words if you don’t know how it’s been doctored and the story that goes with it. This isn’t anything new, though. The Soviets were erasing people from photos during the cold war, and Kevin Kelly wrote Digital Retouching; The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything for the Whole Earth Review back in July of 1985.
• In Monetize THIS we’re offered a nice suggestion for dealing with postal-mail spam. There was a while when I would stuff the envelope with the payment full of all the crap they’d sent with the bill, but at least once that burned me because they signed me up for one of those valuable offers, even though I hadn’t filled out the form. But I accumulate a (standard, paper) grocery bag full of crap from the mail every two weeks, and it would be nice to find something to do with it other than letting the city burn it for energy. [doc]
• Yesterday I took the bus downtown to have lunch with Steph. After lunch, I stopped by the Office Depot in City Center to pick up some stuff to try and get organized around home so I wouldn’t have a huge pile of papers living on my dining room table. I was kind of amazed as I walked through there back out to Hennepin Avenue, since over half the storefronts on the ground level were boarded up. Apparently this isn’t big news but I hadn’t realized the extent of the problems in there, since I haven’t been in there for a while. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s been shopping elsewhere.
• While riding the bus downtown, I talked with the driver. She wasn’t super-enthusiastic about the new contract, and is just hoping that things are quiet between now and when she can retire in three years. Meanwhile, other people are looking at How Not to Repeat This Process 15 Months from Now. I think that’s an important question, since the real problems behind the transit strike haven’t been solved, and without some changes, a strike in summer 2005 could be uglier than this one.
• For some lighter Friday fare, check out The Men Commandments. They’re not just good ideas, they’re commandments. [holy schmoly]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 23, 2004     April 23 in History

Yeah, I know I was late with this morning’s update. Sorry about that, but after going out for dinner and beers last evening, I stayed up late reading and then I overslept this morning.

• Interesting, but not surprising: Nuisance crimes drop during strike and have picked up again now that the buses are running. Around the U though, bike thefts were up during the strike. [daily]
• Cable and satellite TV Providers cool to Pawlenty’s Twins TV mediation proposal which would try to get the Twins on the air by the all-star break. Pawlenty also wants to see a stadium built on his watch, which I suspect is why he offered the mediation services. [press-patch]
• There are Severe weather drills planned today around here, so don’t freak out if you hear sirens at 1:45 or 6:55 pm. This is only a test. Had this been a real tornado, all the TV stations would have been telling you about it for the past couple hours.
• The Mosquito treatments meant to take bite out of season are starting already, since mosquitos normally start coming out in a week or two. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying working outside so far. No bugs yet. [strib]
• On a lighter note, Rob asks How Much is Inside a Keg? and other questions over on cockeyed.com. Fun reading if you’ve got nothing better to do with your day. As for the keg? 141 red plastic cups, or 25,810 calories.
• As if perl wasn’t write-only enough, there’s now Lingua::Romana::Perligata, perl for the XXIimum Century. Sick. Twisted. Fun! Watch:
  

          maximum inquementum tum biguttam egresso scribe.
          meo maximo vestibulo perlegamentum da.
          da duo tum maximum conscribementa meis listis.
  
          dum listis decapitamentum damentum nexto
              fac sic
                  nextum tum novumversum scribe egresso.
                  lista sic hoc recidementum nextum cis vannementa da listis.
              cis.
  

  get turned into:

          print STDOUT 'maximum:';
          my $maxim = <STDIN>;
          my (@list) = (2..$maxim);
  
          while ($next = shift @list)
              {
                  print STDOUT $next, "\n";
                  @list = grep {$_ % $next} @list;
              }
  

  Recognize it? It’s the Sieve of Erasthones. As I said, Sick. Twisted. Fun! [jr]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 22, 2004     April 22 in History

• In the most recent issue of America’s 1st Freedom NRA-ILA executive director Chris Cox says Voting to ban guns and gun shows puts a lawmaker firmly on the anti-gun bandwagon, by any definition. And yet the NRA supports George W. Bush who wants to renew the Clinton Gun Ban. When the NRA doesn’t use this opportunity to put some heat on GWB for his anti-gun stance, it hurts the cause they claim to espouse. Then again, I’ve thought for quite a while that the NRA’s primary goal is to raise money, and in order to do that, they need visible enemies. They can’t be successful in their stated mission, as that would mean an end to the money. Time to send extra money to the Gun Owners of America again, I guess.
• It appears there’s a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda after all, in the form of Oil-for-Food & Terrorism. Here’s a financial link that looks pretty solid to me. And yet it’s not getting much press. There’s much more over at the Instapundit. [lileks]
• The TV Blackout could hurt Twins [stadium] bill. As well it ought. If Carl Pohlad doesn’t want to make it possible to see the games on TV, I don’t see why there should be any government help on the stadium issue for the team. But then for me, the Twins are just a distraction during the parts of the season when the Saints aren’t playing, and their training camp starts two weeks from today. And in other baseball news, the Northern League is going to expand to Calgary and Edmonton in 2005. That's going to make for some brutally long road-trips, I think. [press-patch]
• Some people don’t like the idea of commuter rail in their quiet communities, and the ’No Northstar’ folks [are] trying to gain steam. The people cited in the article moved to Big Lake to get away from the big city, and are upset now that it’s coming to them by way of commuter rail. My take is that they need to decide whether they prefer to have Highway 10 be six lanes of cars, or have trains going past. Development is going to come one way or another. [strib]

Sorry there’s not more today, but I’m still trying to catch up from Monday, and there’s not a lot in the news that’s grabbing my attention. What there is just riles me up, as you can see.

There is one additional thing. I’ve got a new bird in my backyard that I don’t know what it is. It looks kinda like a woodpecker (beak and body-shape), is about the size of the common grackles, though a bit thicker in the body, and is mostly grey with a red band across the back of its head, a black throat, and a white patch near its tail that’s hidden by its wings unless it’s flying. Any ideas what it might be? Send ’em in, please.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 21, 2004     April 21 in History

• Because of new technologies like aluminum and composite body parts, plus many more electronics, New cars are getting too expensive to fix. I’m thinking about this a bit, as the crappy factory paint job that fell off my car has finally led to a hole rusting all the way through the driver’s door, and I’m trying to decide whether I spent a couple grand fixing up a 1992 car or look at buying a new one. Then again, the buses are running and maybe I don’t need a car at all. Well, except for the drive up to mom’s. [slashdot]
• For those of us who still use metaphorical stone-knives and bear-skins, here’s a handy little vi tip that I seldom remember until after I’m done needing it. Maybe my pointing to it here will help me remember it. [holy schmoly]
• EFF has started a Patent Busting Project to point out and attack bad software patents that threaten the ’net. As Cory says: This is so freaking cool. [boing boing]
• President Bush says we have to Renew Patriot Act or Else, but there are more and more Congress-critters thinking that might not be the best idea. Bush also says that the Patriot Act marks a major shift in law enforcement priorities from the investigation of past crimes to prevention of future attacks. Gotta keep people from committing those thought-crimes, y’know. [wired]
• Now that the strike is done, Metro Transit will offer perks to win back riders. They’re lifting the beverage ban, giving out free newspapers, discounts on monthly passes and coupons for Twins tickets. The Daily also editorialized that the Strike’s over; get back on the bus to show support for transit. [daily]
• This is kinda spiffy: Opinion Duel is A Joint Presentation of National Review & The New Republic. It looks like they’re planning to alternate days so each has time to respond to the other. [101-280]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 20, 2004     April 20 in History

• How ’bout that weather? It hit 89 here yesterday (that’s 32 for you metric sorts). Hot! Then came the inevitable thunderstorms. The only real damage around the homestead is that my recycling bin is probably in North Oaks or some other inaccessible place north and east of here. Or maybe it’s in the neighbor’s yard. Hard to say with the gusts of over 40mph, but I’ll probably spend a few minutes today trying to track it down. Other than that, it was a good hard rain to wash the dirt off the sidewalks and lots of dire warnings on the TV, and that’s about it. But I enjoyed it, even the part of driving home through puddles more than 6″ deep. Update 1:30pm: While I came through the storm just fine, mom’s house got hit by hail that put holes right through the vinyl siding. Ouch. The insurance company has been called, and it should be fully covered, but I lost the morning to driving up there and making phone calls.
• I got a few comments about the post yesterday, asking if I wasn’t rushing things by planting this early, specifically the hops. The way I figure it, there’s a chance we’ll get a killing frost that will hurt the hops, but they were taking over my kitchen, and I feel better for having put them outside. If they do get killed off, I’ll put in replacements and figure it’s a lesson learned. If they don’t, they’re going to be monsters in the fall, since they got a couple-month head-start on the growing season. I’m also going to plant the peonies I bought on Saturday next weekend, which is also a little early, but will probably turn out fine. While all the gardening sites say we still have a chance of frost here until mid-May, I figure that I’m close enough to downtown that the heat-island effect means that’s closer to the start of May, or maybe into April, and I’m willing to roll the dice for a week or two.
• Steph and I went shopping yesterday. We hit Menards and Sears to look at paint colors (and I brought home about 300 chips of different shades of blue), and then it was to Bed Bath & Beyond for some bedding and perhaps a bit of beyond. The bath is okay, thank you. I had a 20% off everything coupon that they send to people who buy new homes and it worked. I “saved” something like $80, but I have pretty bedding that will help me eliminate ¾ of those shades of blue, so I can take the remaining ones to the carpet store and pick out some carpeting, reducing the paint choices to only a dozen or so, at which point I’ll buy a shade of paint that matches absolutely nothing within five miles of my house. Strangely enough, I’m enjoying the process.
• After the shopping, dinner with Steph & Tim was chicken breasts stuffed with provolone and capocollo on top of some pasta with an alfredo sauce. I’m pretty sure that’s a recipe that will make it onto the grill at least once this summer, except I won’t try to make sauce at the ballpark and will put much more cheese and ham inside the chicken (thereby guaranteeing a flare-up from cheese dripping onto the hot coals). Or maybe I’ll bring some prepared noodles and sauce. No matter what tweaks I make, it was a tasty first attempt.
• This morning, the buses return to the roads, ending the strike. This Daily editorial about the strike settlement and health care points out that this is not the first strike brought on by rising health-care costs, and suggests that the problem needs to be solved at the federal level. [daily]
• Meanwhile, in another conflict that’s biting Twins fans in our collective couch-potato keisters, Twins fans upset about lack of air time because Victory Sports One hasn’t been able to reach deals with the cable or satellite TV companies. But really, they care about us. Meanwhile, Twins fans are subjected to John Gordon on the radio. He’d be a fine TV commentator, but on radio his habit of never updating you on the score, count, or even what inning it is does not make for an enjoyable listening experience.
• Finally, in history today, nine years ago, eleven years ago, 143 years ago and 229 years ago. A bloody day, but I suppose you could probably make a case for any day of the year being bloody.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 19, 2004     April 19 in History

I’m tired this morning. Not the I should have slept longer kind of tired, but rather a more physical, muscle-aching kind of tired that I don’t get too often, what with spending most of my working time at a desk. I spent yesterday afternoon rearranging my yard. I moved the trellis that arches over the front sidewalk a bit so I could plant my hops next to it. I planted those hops, moving the piece of sod I cut loose to the hole left where I pulled out one of the clothesline poles a couple weeks ago. I trimmed a bunch of a dead shrub out of the chain-link fence (I would have tried to finish the job, but the shears I was using broke). I tore out the edging on one of the garden spaces the previous owners left for me (it’s going to get peonies and grass, I think). I planted onions and garlic in the other garden (making it about half-full). And then I sat on the lawn and watched the birds play in the sprinkler while quaffing a couple beers.

It was the kind of afternoon that’s fairly satisfying. None of the changes are huge, but they all aim at making the house feel more like home, and will hopefully make it a more pleasant place this summer. This afternoon I hope to plant the peonies, but if I get rained out, I’ve got inside work to do, too. There’s still a section of kitchen wall that needs to be replastered, and there’s a bigger section that needs a good scrubbing before I repaint it. I need to replace the light fixture in the bedroom I’m going to move into one of these months, and I want to put a thermometer with an outdoor sensor in the bathroom so I can look at it in the morning and figure out what kind of day it’s going to be. There’s also a bunch of stuff in the basement that I either need to figure out a use for or throw away, and the big pieces of wood that were the edging for the garden I removed that probably need to be cut into smaller pieces so the trash-man will take ’em. Then again, maybe they’re the kind of thing that one of the neighbors will want, and I won’t have to worry about it.

But I’m tired enough, and feel enough of a sense of accomplishment that if I just spend the afternoon watching TV, I’ll still figure it was a productive weekend.

• In something of a shocker, Symantec Confirms Norton Utilities & SystemWorks’ Demise. While I wasn’t using either of the products, since Norton Utilities quit being useful with Mac OS X, and I switched to Diskwarrior, but many people were using them, and it’ll shake up the market a bit, especially when 10.4 ships sometime later this year.
• Says here you can CARP your way to high availability if you’re running OpenBSD. It lets you warm-swap servers, so if one goes down, the other will just automagically take over. More spiffy stuff from the OpenBSD team. As the article mentions, it’s not perfect (the machines have to be on the same subnet), but it’s the kind of thing that a certain ISP I know might want to consider (it’s been ported to FreeBSD, too). [openbsd]
• I see these same sort of USB MakeDevice errors on my Mac sometimes when I plug my Samsung i500 into the dock. Annoying, since they often prevent the Mac from sleeping. Google doesn’t find anything more useful that that page, and an email to some people who might know about this sort of thing didn’t produce anything useful, either.
• The Transit center gets it in gear as drivers are called back to work, and buses are being readied for service on Monday. I probably won’t even need to ride the bus anywhere this coming week, since it looks busy with work and with longer trips, but it’ll be nice to have the option if I decide I can take the time to have lunch downtown with a friend. [press-patch]
• Jim also points out that the Bus Strike [is] Over, and gives more details about the photo in the Daily that I linked to, and agrees that the union lost on the health-coverage for new hires. He also points out that this contract only runs for a little more than a year, so we could be facing another strike in summer 2005. Lovely. [jim]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 18, 2004     April 18 in History

• The union accepted the contract and the Buses will roll Monday. The article has the details, but the big thing is that the union accepted a deal where new hires will not get retiree health benefits. [press-patch]
• Scott McGerik’s been feeding the Birds, too. I’ve got about the same mix of birds as him, but with more sparrows, since I just use the plain mix of seed. I don’t have any blue jays or woodpeckers yet, but I imagine I’ll get more birds as time goes on. About five minutes after hanging up a feeder full of sunflower seeds on Wednesday, I saw my first finch. [scott mcgerik]
• When I first saw the headline Old Stones Reveal Their Age, I thought it was something about Mick & Keef, but it turns out scientists have figured out a new way to date tools made from rocks from a hundred to a hundred-thousand years ago. That fills in the gap between radiocarbon dating and potassium-argon dating. Handy! [wired]
• An Overlooked Tax Provision Gets Attention in Florida, and could lead to a tax on each and every multi-user LAN in the state. If enforced, it would be one of the largest single tax-increases ever in Florida.
• The N.R.A. Opens an All-Out Drive for Bush and Its Views, in spite of his support for the Clinton Gun Ban which he promised to renew. Once again, I see no reason to vote for either Bush or Kerry. I’m going to look for a candidate who has some understanding of what freedom actually means. Or is just a complete raving loony. I haven’t decided yet. [nyt]
• April 19th through 25th is National TV Turnoff week. I’ll have to spend extra time watching the idiot box to make up for those who decide not to watch. [slashdot]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 17, 2004     April 17 in History

I could go on and on, but the basic theme for this week was distractions from the work that pays the bills. It won’t end with the weekend, but hopefully I’ll at least be able to ignore things for a few hours over the next couple days. Yes. It’s a Very Grumpy Morning.

The biggest frustration this week has been dealing with the headaches of the Adhoc website. I can reliably generate the content or manage the website. Trying to do both is Just Not Working. It’s gotten bad enough that I’m probably not even going to go to the @#$% conference at this point. But after spending a few extra hours working on the website every morning this week, I feel just as tired as I do after the conference anyhow.

Mostly I just need to remind myself to never volunteer to run a website for anyone for free ever again. No matter what kind of goodwill comes out of the deal, it just isn’t worth it.

• The Metro Transit union committee recommends workers accept offer to end the strike. The voting will conclude later today, and if the union accepts the proposal, and then the Met Council okays it, the buses could be running on Sunday. [daily]
• Meanwhile, the Drivers expect close vote on the contract, but this article has details on the proposal. After looking at the details, I see why. It’s not a sweetheart deal for the union, but nobody expected that. I guess the big question is whether it’s good enough. The executive board seems to think so, but now it’s up to the drivers. [press-patch]
• Mark Stonich, who I know from the MNHPVA has posted An Holistic Guide to Recumbent Design. He’s got some unconventional ideas, but generally puts together good ’bents. [jim]
• It’s spring, and Bike thefts [are] in full bloom around the U. This happens every year, and an awful lot of the thefts are because people didn’t lock their bike up at all, let alone with a crappy lock. [daily]
• Monday was the tenth Spamiversary of the first spam sent out by Canter & Siegel. Sad. Dealing with the spam is getting to be a bigger part of my morning every day. It doesn’t make me happy.
• The FTC says Porn spam must be labeled.

  An FTC study released last spring found that 17 percent of pornographic offers contained images of nudity that appeared whether a recipient wanted to see them or not.

  Apparently people have never heard of turning off HTML email to avoid just that problem. [boing boing]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 16, 2004     April 16 in History

I’m not trying to rub anyone’s nose in anything, but I nearly forgot the significance of today. I have to file my corporate taxes by March 15th, so I usually complete my personal taxes by then, too. I spend April thinking about other things. So there won’t be much here about taxes today. Maybe that’s a good thing.

• The Union vote is today, Friday and the buses should be running by Monday, at least. And the big delay is because of large changes in the health plan. I’ll be interested to see how they changed things to get a solution that’s acceptable to both sides. You’ll also notice that the Pioneer Press has started requiring registration. Sorry about the pain. [press-patch]
• Theresa Sheehy says Peter Bell Stood [her] Up! She called his number, got though, and asked him for a ride home. He said yes, and never showed. Shouldn’t be too surprising, but I guess it made for a good enough article that I linked to it, so…
• It seems a Glitch delays buses’ return. But Jim & Timmy Ramone got their pictures in the Daily in this article, so it’s worth linking to. And the Daily doesn’t require registration to read the news. Update 1130: The caption on the photo is wrong. Jim is on the right. Also the sign and bike in the foreground belong to Sara (who some might know as Grrrl). [daily]
• While Jim & Timmy were lounging around Coffman Untion, I was talking on the phone with a senior tech at Cisco, trying to figure out why my PIX 501 was dropping connections. We spent about an hour on the phone, with him connected into my PIX, and at the end of the time, all was well. Basically it turned out that the PIX needed a software upgrade. It’s a real shame that the previous techs didn’t get this and I had to get to a tech in the US by way of the CEO’s office, but once I did get to the big gun, he diagnosed the problem quickly (as soon as we actually saw it happen) by looking at the logs in the box, and then installed the new software for me. This was definitely service above and beyond normal, but even his spending an hour was less time than was wasted by the various techs where their callerID information said they were from Convergys.
• I’m not the only one having problems with my computers lately. Zeldman had the The Great Panther Disaster of 2004, but had never heard of holding the mouse-button to eject a CD. That’s been in the OS since I can remember, and is documented somewhere on Apple’s site, but to plug myself a bit, it’s the first thing listed on my Magical Macintosh Key Sequences page. Personally, I’ve never had an upgrade go so badly wrong, but then I don’t run much in the way of third-party add-ons, either. [zeldman]
• Bruce Schneier says A National ID Card Wouldn’t Make Us Safer, and he’s got a point. Checking IDs gives a sort of Papieren Bitte! feeling that reminds me of East Germany around 1980. But more importantly, checking someone’s ID doesn’t prove whether or not that person is a terrorist. It just proves whether or not that person has an ID (which might be fake). It does absolutely nothing to make anyone safer.
• Bruce’s April 2004 CryptoGram is up, too. He’s got an article in there about stealing an election, and looks at the Congressional Election of 2002. The conclusion is that voting machines are easily worth attacking. If someone hasn’t already rigged the voting machines, there’s awfully good reason to suspect they will before this year is over.
• Finally, did you see how American Express threatened Brad Templeton over joke on web site? And Brad’s response is priceless. Er. Has no preset-limits. Damn, just go read it and click the links. Brad’s funny, and has a good way of dealing with lawyers. It’s even better because he wins. [boing boing]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 15, 2004     April 15 in History

• In breaking news from yesterday morning, Buses could run Saturday. Negotiators came to a tentative agreement yesterday morning about 9am after negotiating all night, and the union’s executive board was to vote on it yesterday afternoon. The Met Council votes this afternoon, and the general membership of the union will vote either today or tomorrow, with bus service resuming on Saturday, and back in full-swing on Monday. Terms of the contract haven’t yet been made public. [press-patch]
• Meanwhile, around the U, Riders welcome bus strike’s end as students are looking forward to getting back on the bus. [daily]
• There’s a longer article: Tentative deal set to end strike that still doesn’t give any details on the settlement. [press-patch]
• But Looking Ahead: Funding issue shadows future of Metro Transit, and even with the strike ending, the state legislature needs to figure out how to give transit a stable source of funding. [press-patch]
• In the continuing Tech Support saga, it’s no wonder I’m having so many problems with Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center. It’s really run by Convergys, and the Indian accents of everyone who’s worked with me are explained nicely by the fact that they’ve moved most of those jobs to India. Further, the woman I was working with has quit, so I’ve got to explain the problem all over again to new techs. I guess her quitting isn’t surprising, either, since India call centers face employee exodus.
• In fact, I was starting to think that Installing Linux on a Dead Badger would be easier than getting through to someone who actually cared at Cisco, but then one final call to Cisco headquarters got me through to the executive assistant to John T Chambers (the CEO & President), where I left a message explaining the situation. I got a call back a couple hours later, and got to spend fifteen minutes explaining what the product was (are you sure it’s a Cisco product?), who Convergys is, and generally cluing in the person at Cisco to why this was all a problem. Since she’d never heard of the product, it’ll take her a while to figure out who should deal with this problem, but maybe there’s some hope of progress.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 14, 2004     April 14 in History

Just to recap, the weekend was mostly concerned with sloth. I got a few things done, but nothing like what I’d wanted to, and I was horribly lazy most of the time. Yesterday, I was busy tying up loose ends from the weekend, plus catching up on correspondence for work, and basically trying to finish a bunch of things I’d started over the previous few weeks. I think I was relatively successful, and by the time evening rolled around, I had time to kick back and think about things a little. That’s a very good feeling, especially if I can sustain it for a while.

• In Deregulation Pains, the Idiot Villager looks at my comments on deregulation and says:

  Sadly, government has left reformers with little to work with. Sometimes reformers must demonstrate the house-of-cards structure of government bureaucracy by deregulating a sector and allowing the still-regulated sectors to collapse. It may not be nice, be neither is government.

  That’s part of what I was getting at with the post, but I usually stop short of advocating collapse. Why? Mostly because it will inconvenience me more in the short-term to have things collapse, but also partly because it will hurt others. In the long-term, it’s probably best to let things collapse (which I alluded to in my comment that I’d start rewriting the code and end up never shipping), but I’ve been looking at life through a short-term viewpoint lately. That’s part of what happens when I get too busy to lean back and ponder.
• I got another call yesterday from Cisco technical support about my PIX 501. They’re wondering what I want to do with it, as I’ve had a case open with them for a few months now. I replied that I don’t have time to set up two machines to do the packet-sniffing you want, so at the moment, I’m living with the problem and cursing Cisco. The guy asked if I wanted to RMA the PIX, and I replied that I was too tired to care. We’ll see if they call back, or just close the case, but I can’t recommend the PIX any longer. It’s supposed to be designed for home-offices, but when something goes wrong, Cisco wants you to be a full-blown network engineer to troubleshoot the damned thing. I’m smart enough to do that, but if I were billing all the time I’ve spent futzing with the damned box, I’d have made enough to buy a half-dozen of them. Oh, and the follow-up call I was promised in five or ten minutes? It never came.
• Hey! Trademark Registration Number 2830084 was granted last week for Better Nerds® and now I can officially use that circle-R on things. How cool is that? Well, probably not terribly, but it makes me happy, and thanks to a last-minute phone-call to the printer, I might have managed to sneak the circle-R onto my new business cards.
• The Third round of transit talks presses on and was still going on when the story went to press after midnight. Hopefully some progress was made. I’d like to have my initial guesstimate of a two-month strike turn out to be too long. [press-patch]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 13, 2004     April 13 in History

Yesterday was Easter, and in spite of the dire predictions of snow from the weather forecasters, it was a pretty nice April day. Plenty of sunshine, and only a little snow-shower shortly after noon. I went up to mom’s thinking we were going out for dinner, but when I got there, mom had stuff cooking. A last-minute change of plans. That happens more often with mom lately.

We’re past the last of the holidays where you can expect snow now (at least in a normal year in Minnesota – there’s always the chance of that freak snow for July 4th). The next holiday on the calendar is Mother’s Day, and we’re genuinely in spring by then. My trike is tuned up and mostly ready to ride for the season, and it’s only due to a full schedule mixed with evenings of complete torpor that I haven’t gotten out for a ride yet. The weather’s been fine for riding, especially as I put on almost no miles last summer, and need to get back in shape. That’s a lot easier when the days are cool, and I can go for a ride without having to worry about coming home all sweaty. And it’s still too early to start planting much outside yet, so I really should get some miles in now. Hopefully this week. Maybe this afternoon.

• I’m a little disappointed I don’t have access to an outdoor shooting range so I can take part in some Post-Easter target shooting with Peeps. Sounds like fun, and Joe’s Market had quite a few Blue Peeps Bunnies left yesterday afternoon. [endwar]
• On Saturday, there was a Bus union backers rally at the Capitol. Jim went to it, and said I’d say roughly 1,000 people – not a bad turnout. Today at 4:30 there’s a rally at 3rd & Cedar on the West Bank in Minneapolis, and on Wednesday at 4:30 there will be a rally at Coffman Union, which will be joined by a special Critical Mass ride. I don’t know about today, but I might wander over to Coffman on Wednesday to see what the Mass will be up to. [daily]
• The Transit strike hits home for U’s disabled. Yeah, it’s been pointed out before, but David Strom’s idea of buying people cars doesn’t work so well for the blind. [daily]
• If you’ve got a Palm and need to take screen shots, zgrab might be for you. The only other thing it needs is an expansion slot. Sadly, that means it doesn’t work on my phone, which doesn’t have one. [vowe]
• The Anchorage Daily News has an article on Freeing up time for Fox’s Free Beer Fridays. Basically it’s a small, quirky brewery that gives out free samples every Friday and brings the town of Fox together. Sounds like a pretty cool thing if I ever happen to find myself near Fairbanks with nothing to do on a Friday evening. [fark!]
• And to open your beers, you can use a Nun Bottle Opener. She’s dedicating her life to helping you open bottles. [reed]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 12, 2004     April 12 in History

• You might wonder Why Eat Peeps at Easter? Well, it involves Germans and pagan religion… That explains the ritual of biting the heads off chocolate bunnies, too. [fark!]
• Last night I finished writing up Dave’s Accordion City Adventures, my account of my vacation in Toronto. It only took me two weeks to get the vacation account put together (well, one evening to do the work – two weeks to get to it). That’s not bad at all, given how busy I’ve been since returning.
• The U.S. Won’t Let Company Test All Its Cattle for Mad Cow, even though Japan requires that all animals to be exported to there are tested, and Creekstone makes most of their money exporting beef to Japan. Even though they’re willing to pay the costs of testing, they’re not allowed to because: Under the Virus Serum Toxin Act of 1913, the department decides where cattle can be tested and for what. [nyt]
• A Space Celebration Circles Globe on Monday, April 12th to commemorate Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight in 1961. According to the Yuri’s Night website, there’s a party here in Minneapolis. [wired]
• There are some other blogs covering the transit strike more closely than I am: TC Metro; Your Friend, Kid Tiger and the transitlibrarian. Thanks to Jim for pointing them out. [jim]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 11, 2004     April 11 in History

the poker table

1775x1073(259k)

640x386(19k)

• My new dining room table arrived yesterday (it also serves as a card-table when you flip the top), and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s solidly constructed, and the chairs are also comfy and solid. And it looks good in my dining room, I think. Now that I’ve actually got it, I can start shopping for the paint for the dining room and the kitchen. I’ve also gotten the first of two estimates for replacing the sidewalk outside, and the focus for other improvements is moving outdoors for the summer. There are weeks when it doesn’t seem like I’m making much progress around here, but I’m feeling pretty good about the house lately. Many of my must do projects are either underway or done, and the ones that remain are getting smaller in size (and cost). Being able to look back and see all the things I’ve gotten done since I moved in back at Christmas makes me happy. There’s still plenty to be done, but it doesn’t feel as imposing as it used to, and that’s a good feeling.
• Modern Drunkard Magazine has a fine list of 40 things every drunkard should do before he dies. Aside from spend a night in the drunk tank, most sound like worthy goals. [WVSR]
• The new Enlux L.E.D.’s Make for Warm Light but the Bulb Keeps Its Cool, with a floodlamp that produces the equivalent light of a 65 watt lightbulb, using only 25 watts. Sounds cool, but they’re probably too expensive (over $50 per bulb) for home use right away. Hopefully the price will come down over time. [nyt]
• Bill and I were talking about phones yesterday, and he mentioned VerScient Technologies’ Converser, which sounds like a cool phone system, working within the existing phone system. But today’s phones just suck. They’re incompatible with politeness (especially call-waiting), hard to configure (why can’t I easily tell my phone that I want mom to be able to call-wait into other calls, but when I’m talking to her, call-waiting should be disabled, all calls from phone-spammers should be rejected outright, and calls from fundraisers for companies I do want to talk to should go to voice-mail if they call during my business hours?), and just a ton of other complaints about the existing system. It’s understandable how the phones got the way they are, but change is overdue. Even with existing phone-switches, the phone companies could be providing much better service. We both decided that over time VOIP, possibly Vonage will kill off the existing phone system, but I worry about the damage that will be done by the dinosaurs’ death throes. I also worry that there will be too much emphasis on a black-box solution that won’t give me the opportunity to tell my phone how I want it to work. [bill]
• The National Budget Simulation lets you adjust spending and taxes in the the 2004 budget proposed by the White House to achieve a balanced budget. It’s an instructive look at where the money comes from and goes to. [boing boing]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 10, 2004     April 10 in History

I’m moving a little slow this morning. Yesterday Jim & I moved the top of the old glass-topped table out of the dining room and into the garage, making room for the new dining room/poker table that’s to be delivered this morning. Then we headed to the Sportie for steak dinners (a deal at $3.99) and beers. I ended up hanging out and talking to various folks through the evening (including getting hugs from a couple different cute gals) and found myself walking home at 2am. Oops. Oh well, it was a good evening out. Gotta remember to do that once in a while.

• Interesting, the Met Council, union met again to discuss bus strike on Wednesday, and they’ll meet again on Monday. Hopefully there’s actually some progress happening in the talks. [daily]
• Old news (that I didn’t get to linking to right away): Callers to Pawlenty: Settle transit strike. The interesting bit is at the end of the article, where it says:

  The council announced it would reimburse Metro Transit customers for 31-day passes that have been useless since the strike started. Expired passes that were activated before March 4 can be exchanged for multiple seven-day passes or refunded.

  Holders should mark their pass so it clearly indicates whether they want an exchange or a refund and send it, along with their name and mailing address, to: Metro Transit, Attention: Convenience Fares, 560 Sixth Ave. N., Minneapolis, MN 55411.

  So if you’re holding a 31-day pass, I’d suggest sending it in to get your money back from the Met Council. It’s not really going to hurt their bottom line at this point, but you’d might as well have the money, rather than leaving it in their pockets. [press-patch]
• According to the ATU 1005 website, there’s a rally this Saturday (April 10) at the State Capitol, and Metro Transit and ATU negotiating teams are scheduled to meet on Monday, April 12, 2004.
• Also, via the ATU website, on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 , the Minnesota House voted (search for [TRANSFER OF TRANSIT OPERATIONS.]) not to privatize Metro Transit by a vote of 54 for and 78 against. Now being the libertarian-leaning-guy I am, you’d think I’d be for privatization, right? Sadly, it’s more complicated than that. The reason we need the government to provide transit is that government has made it impossible for a truly free private market to operate a transit line.
  
  This is a problem I often see with deregulation. In many cases, I think regulation is necessary because government has regulated something else. It’s a huge domino effect, and privatizing transit just wouldn’t work without a bunch of other deregulation. You’d have to allow private companies free access to the transit market, and that’s not going to happen without striking a number of city, county, state, and possibly federal ordinances from the books (federal makes the list, because I could see a real metropolitan-area transit system for the Twin Cities going to Hudson, which would mean crossing a state line, which gets into federal complications).
  
  We’ve built huge layers of government in this country over the past two-hundred years. Striking down one piece of regulation without adjusting everything else is probably going to be more disruptive and worse for the people than leaving it in place. That doesn’t mean I’m for more government by any means. I just want to see the adjustments take place, and few legislators see a big-enough picture (I’m not claiming that I do, either) to be able to make those adjustments intelligently. It’s a hugely complex system, and if it were a piece of computer software, I’d start by trying to diagram the interactions. When I got a headache from that, I’d consider throwing it away and starting over (at which point years of development time would be spent, and we’d never ship. That might not be all that bad of an outcome, now that I think of it).

Weather in Minneapolis for April 9, 2004     April 9 in History

Yesterday I had some links to things about the transit strike, but didn't post them. I thought they needed more commentary and took a little extra time to work on that. So today, there's nothing but transit stuff. Sorry if that doesn't interest you.

• This week’s City Pages wants to Bring Back the Buses with a number of articles. They’re talking again about how the apparent goal of the Governor and the Met Council is to kill off transit entirely here in the Twin Cities. Yeah, maybe the bus-strike hasn’t added any traffic to downtown, but since the buses have stopped running, I haven’t gone to downtown Minneapolis for lunch or shopping, either. I also discovered I don’t have a place that’s an easy walk from home to just hang out. I can head to Dinkytown or East Hennepin, but if I want to just head to the coffeeshop for an hour to unwind from work and spend a little time writing, without the buses, the walk would consume the whole time. And I’ve got it relatively easy. My bus-trips are seldom a matter of need. But people like Jim or Steph who commute downtown to work every day have had their lives more seriously crimped. And the stories in the City Pages are from folks who’ve got it even worse. I guess my point is that if I’m starting to get cranky about the bus-strike, in spite of having plenty of alternatives, Governor Pawlenty and Peter Bell had best start paying some attention.
• Minneapolis mayor R. T. Rybak is asking Does This Bus Stop at the Capitol? and turning up the heat on the Governor and Met Council chair Peter Bell. It’s nice to see him using his bully-pulpit.
• This transit strike isn’t the first shot at Busting the Buses, but this interview with William Millikan provides some background that you probably only would have got if you’d gone to the presentation on Transit Workers’ Struggles, Past and Present that Jim & I went to a while back.
• The Buses sit still while strike debate rolls on, and neither side budges. But students at the U are starting to get fed up with it. Yesterday was the day to phone the governor at (651) 296-3391 or (800) 657-3717, but if you missed it, calling today couldn’t hurt. [daily]
• The Daily’s opinion piece Transit strike harms those already struggling with employment; just look at Lake Street does some reporting, too. It talks about how the strike is affecting unemployed people: Many of the people who are unemployed can’t even make it to the unemployment office. [daily]
• In another opinion piece, the Daily says that Streetcars are desired in Minneapolis. They’ve got a case, noting the synergy with the LRT (if it ever opens) and the fact that a line down Lake St. would be a good thing. The question they don’t ask is how it would affect the existing bus route on Lake. [daily]
• The Minnesota Legislature focuses on transit issues after 800 calls to the Governor yesterday urged him to settle the transit strike, but the focus was mostly in the DFL-controlled House, and the Republican-controlled Senate is expected to oppose just about everything the House tries to do. [press-patch]
• Jim’s also asked why I support the transit union, given my politics. Well, there’s something you gotta like about a movement that can inspire a song like Neil Young’s Union Man. Yeah! Oh wait. Is that satire? I still like the song.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 8, 2004     April 8 in History

The busy week continues, too. Aside from the various work-stuff, and long-running non-work, non-paying stuff, I’m also starting to get quotes for replacing the old, uneven sidewalk at my house with a new one. It’s not something I have to do right this instant, but I’d like to have it done before next winter, since shoveling the current sidewalk means about two feet of progress, followed by jamming the shovel into edge of the next chunk of sidewalk. Jarring. Besides, I’ve promised myself that part of the deal for a new sidewalk is a patio so I have a place to set the grill this summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some griping about contractors that’s going to come with the deal, but if I’m ever going to start hosting Friday-night “bring your own meat” barbecues again, I’m going to need a place for the grill.

• Since it is Peep Week, here’s a few more peep-tastic links: Check out Peep Research. There’s also the official website of Marshmallow Peeps if you want the company view on this sort of thing. And if you want to make your own, you need the Wham-O Marshmallow Peeps Marshmallow Maker. Quality Recreation mail-orders it if you have to buy one for someone special, and with next-day shipping, it might even be possible to have it for Easter.
• Mark’s worried about Boing Boing’s explosive growth, since they got 871,305 visits in March according to a web-bug, or 3.5 million by their logs. Meanwhile, Volker Weber [aka vowe] celebrates getting a million a month. Both have plenty of pictures, but VoWe is a lot quicker about rolling stuff off the main page. But they also need to think about how they’re profiting (indirectly) from the blog. Cory, Mark and Xeni have all landed writing gigs as a result of the blog, and I’d figure a certain amount of the cost as marketing expenses. Meanwhile, Kim Du Toit sells out to cover his costs. [boing boing]
• Davezilla offers Nubile Cuddle Pumpkin in which you get a choose one from each column interface to picking a new pet name for that special someone. I need to find me a turgid panty monkey. [davezilla]
• Reason Magazine is Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover, by putting a satellite picture of the reader’s home on each individually-printed cover. It’s an awfully neat stunt, but also illustrates the power of the data they have available. It’ll be in the June issue, and I’m tempted to re-subscribe just to get a copy (although it might be too late). [nyt]
• In a move I find welcome, Some Doctors Turn to Cash-Only Policies. SimpleCare lists cash-only providers by state and specialty. It’s an idea I like, but I also like the idea of an MSA combined with high-deductible health insurance. That’s the kind of plan we’ll probably have at my company, and I’m hoping to get it set up this summer. [endwar]
• The Bush Administration wages war on pornography. Between this and Bush’s call to renew the assault weapon ban, I’m starting to think John Kerry might not be that bad after all. But it’s looking more and more likely I’m going to waste my vote on someone who is neither Kerry nor Bush. This list of candidates is probably going to prove useful. There’s a candidate from the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party, for example. [instapundit]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 7, 2004     April 7 in History

I often live in something of a time-bubble. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the day of the month, other than noticing when it’s the first or the fifteenth, and I need to send invoices off to customers, but there are external reminders that hit me sometimes. This week, I got reminded that Easter is almost here by a comic.

Also a reminder to people who read this site from Windows boxes who will crash if I have a link starting on the drop-capped letter. If that happens to you, drop me an email with the time and date that you crashed, and I’ll fix the problem. I’ve been making sure to start the links after the drop-cap lately, but it’s easy to forget, so if it happens to you…

• Vowe suggests dueling peeps for some seasonal entertainment (I might have to try that. All I’m lacking are the peeps). Meanwhile, it’s peep week over at Dr. Fun. Don’t miss out on the fun! [vowe]
• It’s happened. The Twins Geek is now live on the Star-Tribune website, though he (at least yesterday) had published stuff on his old site first. As of this morning, they redirect to the same place.
• The New York Times reports on A Heretical View of File Sharing, stating that people downloading MP3s doesn’t hurt CD sales at all. Some market experts have also suggested that record sales in the 1990’s might have been abnormally high as people bought CD’s to replace their vinyl record collections. I know that’s been the case with me. I was buying about a CD per week for a long time, filling in gaps in my collection, but recently I’ve quit buying CDs entirely, especially since record companies have started selling shiny plastic discs that are in the CD bins, but are actually copy-protected coasters that won’t play on my hardware. [nyt]
• Here’s a nice little story from the Linux Users Group of Ireland: I fought the scammer… and I won. Tells how they captured a 419 scammer in an internet café in Dublin. [slashdot]
• There are those in Minneapolis who think that Streetcars play a part in transportation plan, or at least they should. The proposal is for the City (hopefully not the Met Council, since they’re doing such a fine job of providing transit now) to run a streetcar line in the Midtown Greenway, which runs from Lake Calhoun to the old Sears building on Lake St., and will eventually be extended all the way to the river. I’d like to see streetcars in there, even if it’s not an ideal route (actually putting them on Lake St. would be better, to my mind). [press-patch]
• Former State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Roger Moe [has been] asked to enter negotiations in the transit strike by the union and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. It sounds as though Metro Transit is still unwilling to budge. [press-patch]
• Jim has a Transit Strike Update. There’s not really much to update, but aside from him thinking that health-care is a right (I don’t necessarily disagree, but I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a right, either), he’s got a pretty good summary of what’s up, and notes on what you can do to support the union over the next week. [jim]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 6, 2004     April 6 in History

And the start of another week of the grind. I’m really not looking forward to this week, but what are you gonna do? I was pretty seriously “offline” yesterday. After a very busy Saturday, I spent much of Sunday napping and generally avoiding life. I didn’t even make it outside to fill the bird feeder.

• Saturday morning I wrote up the problem I’ve having with my Cisco PIX 501 dropping connections. It’s something they’re working with me to help sort out, but I’m getting a little frustrated, since I’ve found one bug and still don’t have the darned thing working the way I think it should.
• Saturday was also the Saints’ single game ticket sales and a small PeTA crowd gathered in the parking lot to burn the cobwebs out of our grills and such. I took pictures of the gathering, and had hoped to post them today, but haven’t gotten around to sucking the pictures out of my camera yet. I hope to get to it soon, but there’s a pretty big list of things I hope to get to soon.
• Jim read Sun, Microsoft settle; take aim at Linux and could only say Huh! I’m surprised it’s taken this long for Microsoft to decide to make nice with Sun, but it’ll be interesting to see what McNealy will talk about now that his biggest bogeyman is now his buddy.
• I’d noticed this and wondered, but it says here NASCAR sends a Dear Bubba letter to its redneck fans by telling Derrike Cope he couldn’t have RedneckJunk.com as a sponsor. I think it’s a pretty stupid move on their part. A huge part of the NASCAR fan base are self-identified rednecks, and I can’t see why they’d want to alienate so many people. [fark!]
• Friends of the Mississippi River has announced their 2004 Photo Contest, focusing on (not surprisingly) the Mississippi. The deadline is September 10, 2004, so you’ve got most of the summer to take pictures.
• Crown Hydro’s plan for historic Minneapolis site [is] controversial, since it would pull more water from the river, possibly diminishing the flow over the concrete apron that is the falls now, plus it would put more high-velocity water in the old mill tailraces, which would have the potential to erode historic structures. I think overall it’s probably a good plan, but some of the details have me scratching my head, especially when looked at in connection with other proposals for the area. [press-patch]
• Some Parts of U.S.-Canadian Border Disappear in Brush as the International Boundary Commission, the agency responsible for clearing out trees and brush on the US-Canada border doesn’t have the funding to keep the twenty-foot-wide and fifty-five-hundred mile long border cleared. In fact, their budget is being cut. During my weekend in Toronto, a few of us talked about the border, and a couple people were surprised by how open the border still is. Yes, there are additional sensors and patrols, but especially in the woods along the Minnesota-Ontario border, the real barriers are natural. I imagine it’s the same way when you hit the mountains in the west. [nyt]
• They say Transit will run again — but when? And will it be worth riding? I’m starting to get disgusted with the strike, and the fact that there’s been no real negotiations. I think it might be time to start calling elected officials and griping in order to get some pressure put on the Met Council. [press-patch]
• The Minnesota Daily believes Met Council should be less partisan, and they’ve got a point. It’s not every day that the Daily and I agree on political issues. [daily]
• Geek with a .45 points out the creepiest thing about the Audrey Seiler abduction story. Somehow out of all the surveillance video, they managed to find video of her buying the items supposedly used to abduct her. Think about that for a while. Think you can gain anonymity by shopping in person and paying cash? It would appear not.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 5, 2004     April 5 in History

…or at least that’s what I did. Sorry. No linky goodness today. I’m taking the day off.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 4, 2004     April 4 in History

• A new deadline request is no ploy, Bell says (of the Light Rail Transit line). Because of the strike, Metro Transit may not be able to open the LRT before the federal December 1 deadline. I think the feds should refuse the request for an extension. Metro Transit pushed the drivers into this strike, and if that delays the opening of the LRT, well maybe that will give them an incentive to settle this strike. [press-patch]
• Says here you can buy Anti Aging Beer. My inititial thought is that I wonder if they soak crystals in it before bottling… It may be fine beer, but I’m generally skeptical of claims like the ones they’re making.
• People have been talking about Google’s gmail, but Evan’s got some Preemptive Pessimism. I agree with his point. Why the hell would I want google to be able to read all my email, and store it on their server? For that matter, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that by the terms of most of the contracts I work under (and most people will have similar non-disclosure agreements for anything work related). Hey, it got them a lot of buzz, and maybe some folks will move from hotmail or yahoo, but I just don’t get it. [101-280]
• Bruce Schneier’s new essay, Hacking the Business Climate for Network Security (PDF) takes a look at what it’s going to take to make computers secure. I think he’s at least partly right that it’s going to take a change in the business climate to make security the default. In libertarian politics, people talk about internalizing externalities and that’s pretty much what he’s saying.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 3, 2004     April 3 in History

• Yesterday morning, I was thinking I would buy Tim a PC EZ-Bake Oven for his birthday. Then I tried to add one to my cart and got reminded what day it was. Sometimes I hate April Fools Day. [boing boing]
• A few Sundays ago I had breakfast at The Triple Rock Social Club. While I was eating, I pondered how I often get crushes on the gals who serve me drinks and food on the mornings I’m hungover and looking for something to cure the pain. Maybe it’s just that I’m a sucker for a gal who takes care of me and makes me feel better when I’m hung over. Or maybe it’s a weakness for gals who bring me booze. In any case, it happens to me often enough that I’m pretty sure there’s a definite pattern here. Now if I can just figure out what to do with this realization…
• PapaScott talks about Subsidized Day Care and how a complicated tax code with a lot of loopholes is actually regressive, rather than progressive. Yeah, I know flat tax went out of style with Steve Forbes, but I still think if I’ve got to pay tax, I’d rather it actually be a fair one, and I can’t see anything fairer than a flat tax. A flat tax would also save me a few thousand per year as an employer, which isn’t a huge deal, but it adds up, since the amount saved grows with the number of employees. [papascott]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 2, 2004     April 2 in History

Once again I’m late with the posting for the day. Not to worry, but this week when I haven’t been busy with work, checking on my mom, or trying to reply to emails, I’ve been sleeping. I took a little break last night and just sat at the Sporty gabbing with people, and then slept late this morning.

• Says here that Cached “favicons” in Safari can cause slowdowns. I see some of that sometime, and am goin to see if nuking the cache will make a difference.
• AOL has a Spammer’s Porsche up for grabs. The car was seized as damages in a lawsuit against the spammer. But if you aren’t already on AOL, you can’t win: The Porsche sweepstake lasts until 8 April, and will be open only to those who were AOL members when it was first announced. [boing boing]
• The Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector’s Edition) will be available on May 25th. If you missed it in the theaters, here’s your chance. Then again, I’ll probably buy a copy, and might even host a movie-night one of these days.
• Most transit Strikers’ health insurance lapsed yesterday. They can apply for COBRA, but the cost is steep and most haven’t. I should probably have a link to Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, too. [press-patch]

Weather in Minneapolis for April 1, 2004     April 1 in History