Not much to ramble on about today. Just some linkage.
- Like me, Skot seems to have figured out What Women Don’t Want. Unlike me, he managed to find someone to marry him anyhow. So I guess there’s hope, eh? [izzlepfaff!]
- Whew! I don’t show up on Inappropriately Dressed. Guess that’s something. [instapundit]
- Do you know the The Secret of Bananas? I didn’t. Until now.
- Wanna take a vacation, but don’t have money to leave town? You can always go on Tracy Jones’ Excellent Adventure. All it takes is a bus pass and an urge to see something new. [strib]
- Right here in my neighborhood, Como Avenue Southeast roadwork to begin Monday, and last into the fall. Both Como and 15th Ave SE should be nicer once they’re done, but it’s going to be a long summer of trying to get around the neighborhood. [daily]
- Is there Discord over Jobs biography? Sure appears so, as Apple has yanked all books published by John Wiley & Sons from their stores because Steve doesn’t like iCon even though it reportedly shows him in a better light than the previous bio, which was written before he took over Apple. Oh yeah, and Tiger will ship this evening. I’ll be installing it sometime after a few utilities I need have been updated to support it. Probably by June. [scripting]
- The author of Moneyball says Absolutely, Power Corrupts, and points to Steve Stanley and Mark Teahen as players who are going against the grain by concentrating on getting on base a lot, rather than worrying about hitting home runs. Excellent article. [kottke]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 29, 2005 April 29 in History
- Have scientists figured out room temperature fusion? Could be. Here is the supplementary data that goes with the article Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal at Nature. You’d have to pay for the article, or read it at the UCLA website, but they’ve been slashdotted. There’s a decent story at MSNBC, too. I’m pretty sure this is the group Bob was working with when he was at UCLA. [slashdot]
- Apparently I’m not the only one wound up about the new Twins stadium. Timmy Ramone says we’re being Foul Balled by the Hennepin County Board. As I said yesterday, I plan to contact them. And pay attention when they come up for re-election. I hope you’ll do the same. [jim]
- Minnesota’s Conceal and Carry law makes return appearance, and looks like it’ll pass. The only real obstacle are amendments that might get slapped onto it in the House. [strib]
- Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, Your Money Under More Scrutiny beginning sometime in the next couple years. Banks have to install software to watch for money-laundering, but most of the people it flags will be run-of-the-mill tax evaders and such. As for the actual bad guys, they’ve got a pretty strong incentive to figure out ways around the system. [wired]
- Claire notes that Credit-card minimum payments to increase, doubling over their previous values. That’s going to put a lot of people into a credit-crunch, and would have pushed many into bankruptcy. Of course it’s now much tougher to declare bankruptcy. Hmm. And as Claire points out, this has received almost no press. How convenient. [claire]
- In a bit of good news, the Feds Rethinking RFID Passport, after thousands of people commented and others demonstrated that the proposed passports could be read from up to ten meters away, rather than the ten centimeters the feds thought was the maximum range. Think anyone will pay for the mistake, though? [wired]
Is no news good news on the personal front? Well, yes and no. Things have been quiet. That’s partly due to the cold and rainy weather (and hail yesterday afternoon) that have kept me from doing much that’s exciting. The biggest task on my to-do list at this point is finishing up the rewrite of the résumé. While I continue to hope that I’ll find a new contract to keep me busy within my own company, I think I need to have a backup plan ready in case I can’t make that work, and getting a full-time job working for someone else is a definite plan B at this point. I don’t want to just get a GOOD job, but I can see that becoming a necessity if I dawdle.
I think the real problem is that I’ve sold the Mac-programming side of my business well in a bad economy. The worse things were for people who were looking for full-time work, the better they were for me. I portrayed myself as someone who could come in, fix some problems, and move on without being a long-term burden for my clients. That’s a great strategy in tough times, but doesn’t fit as well when companies are looking to invest in long-term goals as the economy improves.
And that’s where I’m running into trouble this week. The process of “updating my résumé” hasn’t just meant adding the past couple years of experience to the list, but shifting the focus to emphasizing the long-term benefits I can bring to prospective clients. The core message is still “I’m a smart guy, who can solve your problems”, but my presentation of that message needs to change, and that’s taking a lot more skull-work than I initially thought it would.
Weather in Minneapolis for April 28, 2005 April 28 in History
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about today until I started reading the news. There’s talk about the new stadium for the Twins, plus there was an article in Reason magazine that I just finished reading that covered the issue. It all added up to me ranting about ballparks for a while.
- The Debate on stadium plan going deep as a bunch of people showed up to tell the Hennepin County Board they didn’t like being taxed for a new stadium for a team that’s profitable enough that they could build it themselves. You should probably also know that Peter McLaughlin, who’s on the Board (representing me), is running for Mayor in Minneapolis this fall. I intend to hold his feet to the fire.
- I would really like to believe we can Demolish Sports Welfare, but I suspect the Twins are going to sneak this deal in before the
two court cases [that] could mean the end of publicly funded stadiums.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the new stadium, but I’ve got a long enough memory to know that any “temporary tax” is going to turn permanent, just like it did with the bumps to the sales tax to pay for the Dome, Convention Center (which is still losing the City buckets of money), and Target Center. I just don't think I should have to subsidize the team, even if they go for the community ownership that's been proposed. - Overall, I’m tempted to think the proposal for the news stadium is just another Field of Schemes. Heck, it’s the same deal they proposed last year, and which was rejected by the state legislature, except for leaving off the roof. There’s even more information at Ballpark Watch.
- But it’s not just MLB that’s looking for handouts. As described at Save Midway, and in the article Twelve Million revamp on deck to fix Saints’ ballpark, the Saints are looking for their slice of the pie, too. The most recent plans I’ve heard about have them building a new stadium where the existing parking lot is, then demolishing Midway and putting a new parking lot there. The problem with that is that leaves us with two years of a ballpark with no place to park. Plus the team wants St. Paul to pay for much of the cost. At least in the case of the St. Paul ballpark proposal, the city would continue to own the facility, and it would be used for things like high school baseball, so I guess some public funding would be in order, but we got hit with enough of a hard-sell in 2001, that I’m still suspicious.
- Meanwhile, in Florida, the corpse of MATRIX is barely cold, having only been shut down on April 15th, and already Florida Planning Son of Matrix. Another case where bad ideas just won’t die, especially once there’s a tax-financed bureaucracy put in place that’s feeding off the boondoggle. [wired]
- On a lighter note, how do I feel about Transparent Duct Tape? Well, I’m not sure. But they claim it holds better than the silver stuff, so it may be time to do some investigating. There are some applications where I’m pretty sure I’d be all for transparent duct tape. [fark!]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 27, 2005 April 27 in History
Well, it hasn’t been raining all the time, but all day yesterday was gray and gloomy, with just enough rain that things never dried out. That turned out to be a good thing, since I stayed inside and got a fair amount of work done. In fact, the only thing on the agenda that didn’t get done was updating my resume, which I figure I need to do pretty soon. Today’s supposed to be about the same, so I’m hoping I can be similarly productive.
I also realized yesterday that there are less than two weeks left before the Saints pre-season starts. I’m excited about that.
- More on the story on KGS: Last gun shop may be facing final battle. The city claims there are other locations where Mark can set up shop, but he looked at the 188 locations they told him were okay, and found they were things like the Star Tribune complex, the Target Center, etc. A year after he’d moved to his current location, they provided him with three additional locations which would work, but he couldn’t afford to move again. The hearing is still set for May 19.
- A new report says Smile: you’re under global surveillance. The encouraging news is that nearly 100 NGOs worldwide have joined in to say that round-the-clock, round-the-world surveillance might not be the best way to solve the problems with terrorism. [claire]
- But hey, if you’re not doing anything wrong, What Are You Afraid Of? Well, there are enough laws at the city, county, state and federal level, that the odds are you’ve broken at least one of them. That means that some sort of police have an excuse to arrest you, even if you’re doing your best to comply. [claire]
- I mean, these guys were probably smuggling herring through the security checkpoint or something. Or maybe they were completely legal. Who can say for sure? [papascott]
- Is Hennepin County just telling us to Grin and Bear It, Suckers! when it comes to building (and paying for) the new Twins ballpark? Well, when the politicians admit they don’t want to put something to a referendum because the people will vote it down, that sounds to me like we’re getting a bad deal rammed down our throats. [mitch]
- Normally I’d save something like Bunny suicides for a Friday, but this is too good to wait, and I think I need to lighten up the mood. Note: no actual bunnies committed suicide. [holy schmoly]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 26, 2005 April 26 in History
Another weekend. Neither especially good nor bad, but some of each. On Friday I cooked up the salt encrusted chicken recipe from Jamie Oliver. It came out pretty well, but I don’t think I’ll do it again. Eight bucks for the bird, but ten for the spices, herbs and salt (half of which is for the fennel, which goes on the outside of the bird, and didn’t contribute much flavor I could taste), so it’s not a cheap recipe. Plus it’s hard to get the right grind of salt here. The rock salt is way too chunky (and might have things in it that aren’t good for you), and kosher salt is too fine. So even though the bird came out tasty, between the hassle and the cost, I don’t think I’ll do it again.
Satuday, was a day for being social. I went out to Burnsville with Mark and shot up some paper, then we grabbed Jim, and went down to Dulono’s to watch Cousin Dad. We ended up seeing Kari there, too, and between chatting with her and enjoying the music, we stayed through a set and a half. Should have called it a night at that point, but Jim wanted to swing by Manning’s. We did, and then headed to the Sporty for another. And a few more. Sunday was a pretty lazy day, as a result.
Today, I’ve got some more work to do, and I think it’s time to get serious about looking for a long-term solution to the work thing. I either need to get started on a project that I can sell soon, or I need to update the resume so I can shop myself around more effectively. The big question that remains is whether I’m open to a full-time job working for someone else, and I think I might be.
- With more on the Possible cold medicine ban: Get out your hankies? the Strib clarifies Friday’s article. The ban is on pills only, so gel-tabs and liquid are still okay. Also, the Senate version doesn’t ban Sudafed pills, but simply requires it to be sold by the pharmacist (without a prescription). That’s the current situation at Target, and I can live with that, though I don’t especially like it. The St. Paul paper says Meth bill gets mixed reviews. The more I think about it, the more upset I get about this. Yes, I know that meth is bad, but I don’t see how banning Sudafed is going to make a difference. It’s only the most common precursor, not a mandatory one. If you ban Sudafed, people will switch to using other precursors.
Besides, I’m still mad about when the FDA yanked Dimetapp Extentabs from the shelves and then they were reformulated into something that worked less well. All because one of the ingredients causes a slight rise in the chances of heart attacks in some women. Well, I’m a guy, and it was a damned effective medicine for dealing with my allergies, and it’s gone. Even if it increased my odds of a heart attack slightly, I would probably take it. [strib, press-patch and papascott] - In other news from the Minnesota legislature, the MN Senate, in S.F. No. 606, proposes raising the tax on kegs of beer from $4.60 to $37.52 per 32-gallon barrel (see section 13.32), and from $2.40 to $35.32 for 3.2 beer (section 13.29). The brewer would get a rebate on the tax for the first twenty-five thousand barrels, but the consumer? We’ll see that added buck-per-gallon tax at the tap. [fark!]
- Burt Rutan has a vision in flight, but doesn’t really know what space-flight will be good for. Then again, people who were messing about with personal computers in the 70s weren’t really sure what they’d be good for, either. He does think that if government would get out of the way, there would be a lot more people messing about, and that would be a good thing. Or maybe he doesn’t. [claire]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 25, 2005 April 25 in History
It could be. I’ve spent most of my morning blogging-time working on work and the day already has a frantic feel to it. But hey, at least it’s Friday, right? Only seven more days to the weekend!
- Billmon takes a look at the US and global economies, and figures the economic engine is going to run into a Fuel Shortage eventually. He goes into a lot of detail with graphs and stuff, and ended up convincing me there will be a problem at some point — I just don’t see anything I should be doing differently to prepare for it.
- The Minnesota House votes to ban Actifed, Sudafed in August 2006. I know who to blame during fall allergy season next year when I can’t get one of the few drugs effective at clearing my stuffy head. The Senate’s bill was a little more reasonable, but still went too far, I think. I can only hope they straighten these out during committee, since I would bet that Governor Pawlenty will sign whatever comes his way so he can seem to be
tough on meth.
[strib] - NOAA’s Weather info could go dark under a bill introduced by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), which
would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel
. Never mind that NOAA provides raw data to them, too. I’m for a harsh Darwinian business environment. If AccuWeather (who’s the biggest whiner in this case) can’t compete by adding something that the National Weather Service doesn’t, maybe they need to find a new business to be in. [slashdot] - In other news from Washington, Congress confuses file sharing with manslaughter mandating harsher penalties for copying files on the internets than for killing someone. The bill will almost certainly be signed by President Bush. [fark!]
- The Register has a WiPhishing hack risk warning which explains why you may never want to pay for wireless access, at least through an on-demand,
enter your credit card now
kind of form like most coffee shops use. [flutterby]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 22, 2005 April 22 in History
Yesterday was pretty good. Some work in the morning, and when progress stalled, I just walked away from the computer for a while. Stocked up on groceries a bit (actually, more on herbs and spices for some recipes I want to get to soon), then mowed the lawn for the first time of the year. Nothing too exciting, but it’s another sign of summer in April. Last year, it was May 5 when I used the mower for the first time, so I’m not off base thinking things are happening early this year.
Today looks like it should be another nice day. I’ve got a couple emails I want to answer, then some work, then it’s off to suburbia for a meeting. Depending on how that goes, I might try to work this afternoon, or I might stop and buy those onion sets I keep yammering on about and get them stuck in the garden before it rains tomorrow.
The ducks are back, too. I’m starting to think that they’ve nested, since they’re only appearing one at a time right now, after both of them were waddling around the yard last week. Not sure it’s the same pair as last year, but it makes sense that they’d return, since there’s good grub for them beneath the bird-feeders. Speaking of good grub, I think it’s time for some breakfast for me. Catch ya tomorrow.
- The City Pages has a long article on how How Northwest hijacked Minnesota. The problem is welfare. Minnesota (and Atlanta and Washington DC) gave Northwest corporate welfare over the years, and now the airline (like the others) is dependent on it.
- I mentioned google maps the other day. Well, there’s a blog called Google Sightseeing that goes and looks at attractions in the satellite imagery. [scottk]
- MonkeyFilter has a long list of Everyday Tips, some useful, some not so much. But hey, you get what you pay for. [holy schmoly]
- Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic at Vogue, and frequent judge on Iron Chef America wrote an article on Learning to eat everything almost ten years ago. It’s still good reading. Remember, humans are omnivores, and as such can eat darned near anything, but we also have a built-in aversion to new things, since we’re not always so sure what might be bad for us. [kottke]
- Looking for some amusing pictures? The oops list has a whole bunch of pictures that make you happy not to be in them. [metafilter]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 21, 2005 April 21 in History
There’s a new Holy Father in Rome, and while his biography doesn’t please everyone, I find that I’m somewhat encouraged that they actually elected a Catholic for the job. As for the Hitler Youth thing, I think there are two points. One is that it was mandatory to join the Hitler Youth in 1936, and Ratzinger should have joined in April, 1937 on his tenth birthday. The second, is as PapaScott points out, I don’t think anyone who did not live as a teenager in a wartime dictatorship is in any position to judge whether that was right or wrong.
Overall, I don’t think he that much of a change from John Paul II, and that’s probably just fine for an organization as conservative as the Catholic Church. Yes, he was probably on the wrong side of the sexual-abuse issues the Church has been wrestling with, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a candidate for the job who wasn’t in a state of denial at some point. That doesn’t mean I excuse it, but people fuck up, even some who end up being pope.
On the home front, yesterday was cool and wet. It should have been a super-productive day for work, but I’m bumping against a particularly tricky problem I need to solve, and spent most of the day pondering it and scratching my head, rather than making any real progress. There are going to be days like that, I guess, but I was hoping yesterday wouldn’t be one of them.
Today, I’m looking at more work. Hopefully my brain will decide to wrap itself around the problem I’m wrestling with, but if not, I think it might be a good day to get to some of those outside tasks I’ve been putting off. Like finishing getting the trike ready for the summer, and putting on some miles. Or buying some gas for the lawnmower, and giving the lawn that first once-over of the spring. Or sticking some onions and garlic into the garden. It’s supposed to be around 60° and breezy, which is just a fine temperature for me to be doing anything more strenuous than sitting in a lawn-chair outside.
- If you want to
Discover What the World Thinks About U.S.
, Watching America might be a good option. It looks like they do a pretty good job of translating foreign news articles. There’s almost certainly some slant in which stories they choose to translate, but I haven’t checked in often enough to be sure. - Hey cool! The Good Eats Fan Page has fan-generated transcripts of most of the shows. Handy if you’re trying to remember some of Alton’s explanation. [some guy]
- The State left door open to driver data online, and if you renewed the tabs for your car online, your credit-card or check-routing numbers may be compromised. The bonus is that they don’t even know if any were or not, since they didn’t have any detection systems in place, either. The St. Paul paper says the Tab site [was] troubled from start and has been at risk since 2000, when it was introduced. [strib and press-patch]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 20, 2005 April 20 in History
Yesterday, hot weather. Over 80°F in April. That Just Ain’t Right, no matter how much I enjoyed walking in the sun. I spent the early morning sending out the invoices for mid-month, paying mom’s bills that had shown up in the past week, and emailing back and forth with various people trying to sort out some of the business stuff I mentioned yesterday. When that was done, I was ready for a break, and heading to the bank seemed perfect. Jerry Rau was out on the street in Dinkytown, and I stopped to chat with him for a bit after eating lunch. We’ve both got apple trees that are almost done blooming, and neither of us has seen a bee yet. Dunno if the lack of pollinators means no fruit this year or not, but I suspect so.
Once I got home, it was time for a short nap. I’ve finally adjusted to Daylight Savings Time, and am waking up at five, finishing blogging, breakfast and a shower before nine, work until it’s time for lunch, then a short nap, and work until it’s time for supper and a bit of TV and web-surfing before bed. It’s a schedule that suits me. It’s even better when I’m as productive as I was yesterday afternoon. Supper came with a surprise, though. Mom has inhaled some of her supper and got to make a trip to the ER. She’s okay, but there were a couple tense hours while I waited for the doctor to decide she was okay. Not the kind of adrenaline jolt I needed when I was trying to wind down for the day.
So today, the blog-fodder’s a bit lighter than usual. Sorry about that, but with the excitement in my personal life yesterday, most of the stories I read didn’t seem all that blogworthy.
This morning, it’s supposed to rain and cool down a bit. Almost back to normal temps for this time of year in Minnesota. We’ve already had enough warm that everything is greening up and I’m thinking I’m going to need to go get some gas for the lawnmower soon. Plus there’s still that trip to buy the onion sets for the garden. I bet they go in sometime this week yet, all the dire warnings of frost to the contrary.
- Jason Kottke has a good Adobe Macromedia acquisition roundup pointing to all the varoius stories. Yeah, the acquisition will change the tools that many people use to put things on the web and paper. My initial reaction is that it might open up some new niches to competition, too. And hey, it’s the second time Adobe’s bought Freehand. Wonder what they’ll do with it this time. [kottke]
- If you’re living On Cruise Control, this article offers suggestions on
How to get out of a life rut
. I wonder why nobody ever seems to offer advice on what to do if you’re in a rut and like it. How do you deal with people insisting you try something new just for the sake of novelty? [kottke] - So how’s the little guy doing in America? Cash on the Scarecrow, Pork on the Plow takes a look, and it seems the family farmer is getting plenty of government cheese, as long as he’s part of the Mellencamp family. [metafilter]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 19, 2005 April 19 in History
The weekend, it was a pretty good one. I got the taxes dealt with on Friday and got a little work done. Saturday, Bill and I played gun nuts, stopping by KGS to talk to Mark, and then heading over to the big gun-show at the Fairgrounds. I ran into my step-uncle and aunt there, and talked to them for a few minutes. I also fulfilled my BAG Day obligation. Then Bill and I hung out and just gabbed for a while. It was nice to catch up. Sunday, up to mom’s for shopping and lunch, then down to St. Paul for the Saints Season Ticket Holder Party. More catching up with people I haven’t seen for a few months, plus some pretty darned good beer. When that was done, it was home for a quiet evening, since I figured this week was going to be one that should be full of work, and I wanted to hit it full-steam this morning.
Which brings me to today. I’d already gotten one bit of news over the weekend that’s going to affect my business some (I haven’t figured out how yet), and when I checked my email this morning, there was a message telling me of another change that’s really going to affect my business. Now this isn’t completely unexpected — I’ve known for months that I would have to spend some time refocusing the business. We offer too many different services: Mac programming, web programming, web design, and QA and tech support. I’ve tried to be too many things to too many people. And much of that was by design. I would like to be a full-service operation. The problem is that there are too many of those different tasks that fall on my shoulders, and as such, I had to turn down what sounded like a perfect gig for my company because I wasn’t sure I could handle the responsibilities that would come with it.
I’m not looking for sympathy here. The biggest problem is that I’ve been trying to do too much, and haven’t been successful in delegating. I knew that. I even had some ideas about how to improve. But with the news that hit this weekend, I’m not sure if I want to improve, or whether I should maybe just update my resume and start looking around for a full-time job. That would definitely be simpler. And probably a lot more remunerative, if what I’m hearing about the job market is true. But it would also be more restrictive. I’d be working to someone else’s schedule, and at someone else’s location.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got a few days before I need to panic, and I’ve still got a lot of work I need to get done this week, so I’ll probably concentrate on that, but it’s also time to sort out the long-term plans. If you see me in person, and I seem distracted, that’s probably what’s got me thinking.
- Why did the US government decide on Remotely-Readable Passports? From the sound of it, because some salesman sold them on RFID so he could make a big sale, and they didn’t ask about potential problems until changing to something more secure would mean admitting they were wrong and stupid when the picked the technology. There’s a reason I have that line in my quotes file where a NASA spokesman says,
In the U. S. Government, there is a lot more incompetence and a lot less conspiracy than is generally believed.
Then again, if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you already know that’s disinformation. [boing boing] - Jim Heid points out that the web is A Work in Progress, and points to a number of pages that make that abundantly clear. [zeldman]
- Tim Bray is thinking about Unswitching. It’s not so much that there’s anything better than his Mac out there, it’s more that he’s mad at Apple, and frustrated by the lack of speed-bumps in laptops. John Gruber responds, saying Mac OS X Is Great for Fortysomething Unix Hackers. [zeldman]
- With google maps having satellite imagery now, people are finding that Surprises Lurk in Satellite Snaps. There are all kinds of events that have been caught by the eyes in the sky. [wired]
- IEEE Spectrum offers Apollo 13, We Have a Solution, which tells the story of saving the astronauts in Apollo 13 from the point of view of the ground controllers. It’s a fascinating story of engineers who came up with some pretty impressive solutions under pressure. [vodkapundit]
- It appears there may be Unintended Consequences of Using GPL Fonts, namely that any documents you write using them become licensed under the GPL. While that’s an interesting result, and a reason to avoid GPL fonts, I’m thinking it’s one of those license issues that’s going to be pretty tough to try and enforce if someone wants to just ignore it. [slashdot]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 18, 2005 April 18 in History
Stopped by KGS yesterday. They have filed an appeal with the Zoning Board of Adjustment in Minneapolis, and have an extension of their deadline until May 19, 2005, when a hearing will be held downtown. The public hearing will be at 2pm on May 19, 2005 in City Hall. Room 220CH. This buys them another month, and in that month, they’re planning to file in state court, as well. Financial times are tough, and if you can afford to give a few bucks via their paypal account (there’s a button on their about page), or buy a mug (available next week), they’d sure appreciate the support.
Weather in Minneapolis for April 17, 2005 April 17 in History
Yesterday, I sold mom’s car. Today I send money off for taxes, get some work done, and try not to notice that it’s nice out today, and probably going to rain sometime this weekend. And I’ve got enough plans for the weekend that I expect Monday is going to be one of those days when going back to work feels like a break. Oh well. Nothing for it but to get started. Hope you have a spiffy weekend.
- This list of the 10 best rock movies ever made doesn’t include School of Rock, Rock and Roll High School, or Rock Star, but I guess it’s not a bad list. [fark!]
- Did you know that Digital Noise Reduction in restored cartoons is actually wrecking them? It’s why you won’t find things like the definitive Rocky & Bullwinkle on my amazon wishlist just yet. [boing boing]
- Hitachi has this animation about how they’re going to have the bits in their hard drives Get Perpendicular, increasing storage capacities by a factor of 10. Even if the technology doesn’t pan out, the video’s cool. [boing boing]
- Cool. Radio K expands FM signal to cover all of Minneapolis at 106.5. They’ll get a button on the car radio. The only trick is that they only get the FM slot after 4:30 pm. During the day, St. Louis Park High School uses 106.5. Listened yesterday and they were playing 80s pop songs during the day. [daily]
- Wondering How to Make a Simple Curry “anything”? A guy looked at a bunch of recipes and distilled them down to the essentials for making curry. [flutterby]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 15, 2005 April 15 in History
I retrieved mom’s car yesterday. Thanks to Tim for the help. Now I just need to unload the car. As ever, if you’re interested, drop me a note.
So there’s that to deal with today. And then there’s tomorrow, when I need to have a big, whopping chunk of money ready to send off to the government so they can spend it on all sorts of really useful things.
- My commentary about The Last Gun Shop In Minneapolis on Tuesday has gotten some notice. It’s good to have other people interested, but I fear it’s all too late.
- Congress is working on Copyright Reform to Free Orphaned works so something might actually end up moving into the public domain again one of these days. [wired]
- Paul Ford has some thoughts on Benefits and how they change his outlook on life. When he has benefits, he feels safer and ready to plan for the long term.
- It’s officical: Planes are now no-Bic zones. No more cigarette lighters on airplanes. Matches are still okay, though. Yep, I feel much safer now. [strib]
- In similar news in the war on anything sounding dangerous, the U.N. Approves Global Nuclear Treaty, making it illegal for terrorists to possess or use nuclear weapons. Yeah, that’ll stop ’em. [fark!]
- Looking for some text to fill in a website, and tired of Lorem Ipsum? The Greeking Machine offers some alternatives, as does the Text Generator. Maybe I should be using those more around here. [boing boing]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 14, 2005 April 14 in History
Yesterday was another wet and rainy day, and it affected my outlook all day. I just wasn’t very excited about anything, and from the sounds of things during my brief outing for lunch, I wasn’t the only one. It was a good day to huddle at home.
Today, we’re supposed to have “brilliant sunshine” all day. And after yesterday’s lethargy, I find myself once again with a pretty full list of things to do. Not the least of which is figuring out a way to deal with my mom’s car. It needs to be sold, and the neighbor of hers who wants to buy it has decided that they’re just not going to be able to afford it now. Which leaves me with a car that I need to sell that’s located about eighty miles from where I sit typing this. And the one sure buyer (a friend who runs an auto dealership) is another hour in the opposite direction. It’s not an impossible problem to solve, but it’s complicated enough that it will require either some thought or some help.
Meanwhile, if you’re located near me and interested in buying a 2002 Dodge Neon ES with low miles, drop me a note. I’d like to get it dealt with soon, so I can cross something off of the to-do list.
- A Minnesota Appeals court says gun law is invalid. This means 2003’s conceal and carry law will be appealed to the state Supreme Court, plus lawmakers will try to introduce a new law. But it also means that a very large percentage of other Minnesota laws could be struck down, since they also don’t meet the single-subject rule. Joel Rosenberg has some analysis of where this leaves us. [press-patch]
- They’re still busy out there in Mountain View: Google intros Q&A service which will give you an answer before the search results if google figures you’re asking a question it knows the answer to. [slashdot]
- Scott says Assembly language lives! I think there’s a point there, and I’ve been pondering assembly language for one of the (non-web) projects I’m working on. I haven’t made the jump yet (and I tend to favor hand-tweaking the compiler’s assembly-language output), but there are a few functions that ought to be faster than the compiler makes them. [scottk]
- Jerry’s been seeing a lot of False Positives for Internet Explorer in his logs, and discovered that they’re almost all referer-log spammers. When he filters those out, he sees that IE only has about the same number of hits as Safari. Interesting how much share IE loses when you only count the real browsers. [flutterby]
- The Vi Lovers Home Page has to get added to my “reference” section of bookmarks, I think. [accordionguy]
- Not surprisingly, I guess, Computer keyboards havens for superbugs in hospitals. But they’re the only piece of equipment in a typical hospital that isn’t disposable and can’t be sterilized. Which, I guess makes them disposable after all. [boing boing]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 13, 2005 April 13 in History
In local news, the City of Minneapolis might finally be driving Koscielski’s Guns and Ammo out of business. There’s more on their about us page. Mark’s hung on in Minneapolis for far longer than anyone expected him to, the battle he’s fighting against the zoning in Minneapolis is a tough one. Hat tip to Joel Rosenberg for publicizing this.
It’s been fifteen years that Minneapolis has been trying to outlaw gun shops within city limits by using zoning regulations to make it impossible to sell guns in the city. Mark’s been fighting this all along, and since 1995 has been the only shop allowed in Minneapolis. In 2002, it became impossible for Mark to locate his shop anywhere in Minneapolis due to revisions in the zoning ordinances. He moved, and reopened anyhow while continuing to fight the city in court.
Why is this a big deal? Well, mostly it’s still legal to own a shop that sells guns, and in various legal battles, it’s been determined that using zoning to force people out of business isn’t kosher. Look into the history of “adult shops” in various cities for more on that. I don’t think it’s right to use zoning to make it impossible for a legal business to operate within the city, and neither does Mark.
Here’s some of the history: Mark reopened in July 2003, sued the city later that same month, and continued his battle into 2004. In September of 2004, Doug Grow discovered Mark’s a good guy, too. True, when facing a battle like this, Mark tends to get his back up, and is definitely a thorn in the sides of the powers that be in City Hall, but show me anyone who wouldn’t get a little prickly after fifteen years of legal fights. I really admire Mark’s persistance in this battle, and hope something can be done to help him keep his business.
With that said, here are a few non-gun-nut links for the day for those of you whose eyes haven’t already glazed over.
- The City of Minneapolis envisions citywide Wi-Fi. Sounds like a definite mixed-bag. It’ll be nice to have ubiquitous networking, but I can see this causing real problems for most of the small local ISPs who primarily offer networking service. I also wonder about the wisdom of letting the City snoop all my packets. [strib]
- The bloggers who leaked details about Apple’s Asteroid music project get press support from the AP and eight newspapers. First, it’s nice to see First Amendment protections extending to everybody, not just professional journalists, but second, I wonder why their ISPs have information about their email. Maybe I’m a complete freak, but I’m really surprised at least one of the three isn’t running his own email server. [scripting]
- James Kunstler is predicting a Long Emergency as oil production declines in the future. While I think that some of his predictions for what’s going to happen are overly pessimistic, I think there’s still something to worry about. The problem is that there’s just not the incentive to do anything about it until it’s too late. There’s a discussion over at The Claire Files Board, too. [kottke]
- Regarding yesterday’s comments about planting stuff, it’s been pointed out to me that the Balmy temps bound to drop, and the normal day for the last frost here in MN is mid-May. I know it’s too early to be planting, but the fact that everything is turning green will probably still lead me to pop some onions and garlic into the ground soon anyhow. [press-patch]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 12, 2005 April 12 in History
I looked out the window yesterday and noticed that my apple tree has bloomed. If I were less of a slacker, I’d probably have a picture to post here. A number of other trees are showing leaves, and while I like the spring weather, I keep thinking to myself that “this is just too early.” Last year, it was a week later than this when I planted stuff outside, and some of it ended up getting frozen out, so I don’t want to plant too much, but it’s probably time to get onions and garlic in, at a minimum. Later this week once the rain has passed. Looks like Wednesday or Thursday might be the target date.
I did a little shopping on Saturday to buy some containers to hold my herbs and spices in the kitchen, and after trying various stores, found that Target had some Altoids Citrus Sours on clearance, and those little tins, filled with candy that nobody wanted, were cheaper than any other tins I could find. The snag, of course (you knew there had to be a snag, right?) is that I need to wash them to clear out the candy-dust. But I think they’ll work pretty well. I’ll need to make up new labels and stick them to a cupboard door with velcro (also purchased during that shopping trip), but then I should have my herbs and spices organized so I can find them easily and free up a shelf in the cupboard, too. It also gives me an excuse to refresh some of the ones that have gotten old.
But that’s about all I got done all weekend. Yes, there was the trip up to mom’s. And I did stop by East River Market and discover that Nena’s now stocking Cracker Nuts (except for the Garlic, which are my favorite flavor). She’s also going to order me a wok, since I decided I need one, and couldn’t find a decent one during my shopping trip. But this weekend mostly consisted of laying groundwork for getting things done, rather than actually accomplishing anything. There were a lot of hours spent suckling at the glass teat and not all that much else. At least it had the decency to rain yesterday, so I didn’t feel too bad about spending the afternoon lounging on the couch.
- News flash! Post-9/11 secrecy produces some undesirable results. Hard to believe that bureaucrats might use
security
as an excuse to try and keep their mistakes secret. [schneier] - It’s a first: Judge Sentences Spammer to Nine Years for sending out ten million email messages per day, grossing ¾ million dollars per month. But hey, everyone who got one of those messages was a close personal friend of the guy or had asked him for information, right? His prison term is on hold while he appeals. [fark!]
- Hey, that was quicker than expected: Court Denies Smucker’s PB&J Pastry Patent. [boing boing]
- In France, ‘The Internationale’ Tune Turns Pricey, since the communist anthem, telling people to throw off their chains and loot the thieves who oppress them is still under copyright in France, and the rights-holders are collecting royalties. [boing boing]
- Good news: TSA slated for dismantling. No more Taking Scissors Away. Bad news: the functions will be absorbed into DHS, and they’ll continue making us
safe
. [instapundit] - The 394 tollway is selling passes now at the MnPASS site. The big surprise for me is that unless you have a pass, the diamond lanes will be off-limits during off-peak times now. [strib]
Weather in Minneapolis for April 11, 2005 April 11 in History
- This weekend, Twins fans turning the town upside down as the local boys start the baseball season at home. Tonight’s already sold out, and they’re working on having the entire weekend sold out. It sounds like a good team again this year, but I probably won’t be attending any games at the Metrodome this weekend. For that matter, I still think my first baseball game of the season will be at Midway. [strib]
- Speaking of Midway, in the list of bad ideas to pursue this summer, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams to Play Midway July 29. Man, I’m sorely tempted, even with a ticket price around $50.
- In the latest bright idea out of Washington, Congress may extend daylight-saving time. As Rep. Ed Markey from Massachusetts says,
The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use.
And we all know that you can legislate the way the Earth spins. And since we’ll be getting more daylight here in the US, it’s going to be extra-dark over in Russia and China, right? [slashdot] - Looking for some morbid romance? The Dead Celebrity Soulmate Search might help. I certainly wouldn’t have thought Eva Peron would be a good match for me, but that’s what the test says. [fark!]
- Want cool things in your house, but can’t afford to shop at those trendy stores? Design without Reach offers cheaper alternatives. Sometimes you do get what you pay for, though. [kottke]
- Smucker’s Patent No. 6,004,596: Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich was in court this week. The ruling isn’t due until sometime this summer, but I’m pretty sure this patent should never have been granted. [kottke]
- The Captive Motion Picture Audience of America suggests using their handy Reserved Seating posters if you end up in a theater that tries to show you commercials. Or you can just do like I do, and stay home. [reed]
It’s a friday, and for some reason, it seems better to ramble after the links today. I’ve got another fairly full day in front of me, and am just hoping that somehow I manage to find the time to get my trike ready to ride for the season. I don’t need to do anything major with it, but I was trying to be a good worker-bee yesterday, and even thinking about going out for a ride or how nice it was threatened to sap my productivity, so I didn’t. Today threatens to be much the same.
From the sound of things, we’re due for a beautiful weekend, though. As I’ve said to a few folks lately, I almost wish we’d gotten just one more week of wintry weather (or even normal spring rains) before it got this nice out. I’ve still got too many things that I need to stay inside for, and when I know it’s nice outside, that makes it just that much harder to concentrate indoors. I guess it’s spring fever.
Sometimes it seems as though all I need to do to solve a problem is to publicly gripe about it. Last night, I finally managed to get to sleep “on time” and today I woke up on my normal schedule, adjusted for daylight savings time and all. It helped that I had turned the furnace way down on Tuesday, back when it was warm outside, and had forgotten to turn it back up after closing the windows yesterday morning. When I woke up this morning, it was pretty darned chilly in the house and that makes for better sleeping and a brisk wakeup. Guess it’s a little too early in the season to be completely shutting off the furnace just yet, even with the freakishly warm weather we’ve had this spring.
Today, work. Two projects need to be completed before next week, and I’m going to try and get good chunks of both of them done before tomorrow evening. That means getting a lot done today, and ignoring the distractions like worrying about the taxes that aren’t even due until next week anyhow.
- Just down the road from me, the sign for the 1901 Lofts has gone up. Apparently the first model opens sometime this month. It’ll be interesting to see what effect those new lofts will have on the neighborhood. I’m hoping at a minimum that it will help East River Market, since lunch spots around here haven’t done all that well historically.
- Local Fools Rush In last week, as KSTP and the Star Tribune both reported an April Fools story from the Skyway News as fact, without attribution or any fact-checking. I’m not sure which is worse, but that’s one reason I prefer news stories that link to their sources (or even attribute them). KSTP clearly dropped the ball on that front, and thus made it more difficult for anyone to do the fact-checking for them.
- Was Bert Blyleven King of the Hill? Well, not if you ask the folks voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame, but he was a darned good pitcher, and one of the last to truly be a workhorse, pitching nearly three hundred innings a season. Considering how a mediocre pitcher who gets two hundred innings in a season today is considered a workhorse, I think Bert’s got a pretty good claim on a Hall of Fame spot. I just don’t know if he’ll ever get it.
- In science news: a physicist says Black holes ‘do not exist’, and they’re really dark-energy stars. The answer depends on how general relativity and quantum mechanics play together at singularities in space-time. Heady stuff. [slashdot]
It seems that I'm not the only one having trouble adjusting to daylight savings time, but this is getting silly. Last night, after happy hour with some ex-cow-orkers, I swung by the Sporty for some smoke-free bingo. Won twice, scoring free mozz sticks and a beer. Ended up staying up past midnight again, which means a late start again this morning.
But hey, the computer seems to be running well again. I guess getting cool air to the CPU is kinda important, and a dust-bunny the size of a deck of cards covering the air-intake will inhibit that. Who knew?
- Rogers Cadenhead says In Open Source, All Wallets are Shallow and
An open source project isn’t a business — it’s a charity.
and points out that many successful products out there get mimicked by open source projects. But the real kicker is at the end of the article where he says:Perhaps I’m being obtuse, but if I was told an open source project’s lead developer needed user donations to make a living, I’d be less likely to contribute.
That is, if a project isn’t doing well enough to make a living for the people in charge without begging for donations, maybe you should take a look at how successful the project really is. [scripting] - If any single entity was going to have an impact on spam, you’d figure it would be Microsoft. Me, I would have figured they’d do something in software, but it turns out they’re using the courts, and Bill Gates proves real resolve in bringing spammers to justice. Good for them. [slashdot]
- In a new development, a Company Bypasses Cookie-Deleting Consumers by using Flash to track your movements on the web. Macromedia has put up documentation for the settings manager for Flash, so you can shut off the ability of these applications to track you. [slashdot]
- Want to know What Search Sites Know About You? Are you sure? It’s probably a lot more than you’d like to think about. [wired]
- Safari isn’t supported by the latest toy from Google Labs, Google Ride Finder, either. But then Google Maps does work with Safari, and just got satellite imagery. [metafilter]
- Looking to buy some folk music for your iPod? The Smithsonian Global Sound collection offers DRM-free MP3s for 99 cents per song. And they actually make an effort to get the royalties back to the composers/performers, unlike some more commercial entities who are busy
looking out for their artists
. [boing boing]
It’s coming up on two AM, and I’ve been fighting with my computer since before midnight. It seems to be working well enough that I can write this now, but somewhere along the way the stupid software that swaps the ALT and Windows keys on my microsoft keyboard so they work like a Macintosh’s Command and Option keys quit working, and those are so hardwired into my brain, I’m nearly non-functional anyhow. At least the mysterious thing where I would click on something and the computer would just power off seems to be gone for the moment.
In any case, between fighting the computer, not being able to use any hotkeys, and being up until 2am, I’m pretty sure there won’t be an update today. Sorry about that, but I’m probably going to spend the morning hauling the stupid box out to the Apple Store and seeing what they can do to make it happier.
Some days I hate computers. This is one of those days.
Daylight Savings Time kicked in this weekend, and I’m not the only one who’s still adjusting to it. I’m not quite as grumpy as Kim is about it, but I’m also running just about an hour late. Funny how that works.
On Friday one of my cousins who I haven’t seen since our grandmother’s funeral in 1979 got married, and I attended the wedding. It was good reconnecting with some family, but now I’m going to have a flurry of updates to the genealogy database again so I can have a prettied-up family history ready for him when he gets back from his honeymoon.
Saturday I slept in. That’s the second time in the past week that my body just decided it needed more sleep than I was giving it. In the evening, there was Kat’s party, and I left relatively early so I could be awake for Sunday.
Sunday was a trip up to visit mom. When I got home from that, I attacked the garage a bit more. I can actually get to my trike now, and plan on doing the spring tune-up either today or tomorrow so I can ride once tomorrow’s predicted rain has passed. I can also get to the lawnmower, which I’ll need sooner than I would like to think about. And there was another nap, which didn’t help in my plan of getting to bed at "the right time" under the new clock. But today looks busy enough that I’ll probably be tired and should get back in sync with the rest of the world sometime in the next couple days.
- Jim and Timmy have some comments on the Iraq Intelligence "Failures". I still think that given what I could see at the time, it was reasonable to figure that Saddam Hussein had something he was trying to hide, and we knew he had had chemical weapons (hell, we sold ’em to him). Now maybe his refusal to allow arms inspectors in was similar to my reaction if I was asked if the police could search my house, but when presented with a warrant, I would comply, rather than wait for them to shoot their way in. But will anyone pay for the gross negligence displayed by the intelligence community and/or the administration? Not bloody likely.
- Have libertarians been Cuckolded by the Conservative State. Of course they have. Many are starting to notice, though. [instapundit]
- A new website called RFIDKills.com talks about the State Department proposal to use RFID chips in passports. Deadline for comments is 5pm EST today. [wired]
- In some good news, Secure Flight Faces Uphill Battle and has months left before it’ll meet the basic criteria laid out for it by Congress. With any luck, the system will get some real privacy protections between now and then. [wired]
- Claire has Twelve Tips for Toppling Tyrants while keeping your sanity. A good list of techniques. [claire]
- The New Yorker has a good article on Medicine’s money problem and why health care is so darned expensive. It’s not just that the system discourages patients from keeping an eye on costs, but there are other issues. [kottke]
- Four undocumented Mexican teens are livin’ La Vida Robot, building an underwater robot that took on the best M.I.T. could produce (at over ten times the budget). I’m no expert on immigration policy, but I’m pretty sure these are the kind of immigrants we need to find a way to encourage and turn into citizens. Claire has more on the kids, as An MIT grad reflects on losing a contest to high-school illegal immigrants. He says that the big story is that MIT lost
badly on technical writing and presentation to a bunch of high school kids who speak English as a second language
. Geeks need to learn to communicate. Now there’s a news-flash. [claire]
I looked back and discovered I’ve used the headline “No Foolin’” on April first three times before, so I didn’t want to use it again today. And what should pop into my brain but a Def Leppard song? Sheesh. Sometimes my brain disturbs me.
No real news out of yesterday’s day off. There are just times when one’s body says Enough!
and yesterday was one of those days for me. The timing wasn’t great, as I was trying to put in extra hours working this week. Nor did I head out last night to determine the impact of the smoking ban in Minneapolis. So really, I’m just typing along here saying that I don’t really have any news for you today.
- City Pages this week has The Smokers’s Guide to the Twin Cities. Turns out the American isn’t on the list [I’m told they got their exemption late on Wednesday, after the City Pages went to press], but the Half Time Rec and The Dubliner are. Meanwhile, our own guide to Smoker-Friendly Restaurants in the Twin Cities has languished and I haven’t finished rewriting the code to make it work. But I expect that even if I had the code done today, it would take a few weeks to get all the data updated. Yet another project to work on in my copious free time. [jim]
- Huh. I didn’t know there even was a Twin Cities Pinball Database. At first glance it looks fairly up to date too. [jim]
- It’s a new month, so you can see Tricks of the Trade for a while before they go over their bandwidth limits again. Handy stuff, perhaps. [metafilter]
- Here’s An interview with Bill James. Warren says, and I agree, that Bill James is rare in that he’s one of the few people in the 20th century to completely rethink an industry. Plus it’s a good interview, even if you don’t like baseball. [coyote blog]
- To those who thought that
Bush Lied
on WMD in Iraq, a study finds that the intelligence acencies’ Iraqi-arms link ‘dead wrong’. That pretty well matches what I thought at the time. The President was given bad information. But then again, if you’re convinced he lied, you’re probably convinced this panel was part of a cover-up, right? Warren has more in Meyer’s Law and WMD. Meyer’s law says:
That’s about what I figured. [coyote blog and strib]When the same set of facts can be explained equally well by
1. A massive conspiracy coordinated without a single leak between hundreds or even thousands of people
–OR–
2. Sustained stupidity and/or incompetence,
assume stupidity and incompetence. - Like buying gadgets? Woot! sells one toy every day. Their customer service sounds like it’s basically non-existant, but the things they sell are pretty cheap, so maybe it’s worth it. But today’s speakers are already sold out, which means nothing to see until Monday morning. [WVSR]
- What did you do for Easter? I bet it wasn’t Making Easter egg rockets and then launching them. [colby cosh]