Kaaaaaaahhhhhn!

I HATE CENTURYTEL!
Mood: stressed
Music: None

Sick, Interesting Picture

I'm feeling really sick today. Little voice, sneezing, shivers. Ick.

Anyway, I was reading through some NASA Mars footage, and found some interesting stuff - and surprisingly little commentary on it, so far. This picture is either a fake, a photograph of something shiny that looks remarkably like water, or a Mars Puddle. Any ideas? A few people have commented on the very different texture of the block in the foreground, also. To my eyes, it could be eroded volcanic rock - BUT, why do the two rocks have erosion patterns in different directions? A lot of conspiracy nuts say that it looks like wood. It does, but that wouldn't make much sense!
Mood: sick
Music: None

Updates

I updated C# Ninja with some basic C# tutorials this morning, and finished up a large portion of the site. It still needs work, but it's getting there.

This weekend was dominated by work. New Horizons managed to exceed the 2gb limit on their database, and replication went belly-up - so I had to hand-merge everything, bring the size under control (a few ntext fields had snuck in, changing them to text saved a LOT of space). That took up 7 hours of my Saturday! On Sunday, I went to fix a Jan/Allison's PC for them (again). Really simple fix, but it felt like working a 7 day week.

I'm hoping to get out to see the Geminids tonight, although I suspect that I'll freeze to death!
Mood: tired
Music: None

XBox Live

I finally put money onto my prepaid credit card (it's free for 12 months, but you need a balance to be approved/refunded by MS to prove the card works!) and activated XBox Live today. The signup process was kind of a pain - gamepads aren't made for entering serial numbers longer than your average Win2k3 Server CD-KEY! Still, it went by reasonably quickly - 9 minutes to get online, including the time it took me to tweak my FreeBSD firewall to prioritize XBox packets.

My first online experience was with Crimson Skies. I signed in, downloaded the update, admired the free content downloads (new planes, new maps, new game mods - very slick!), and then selected "optimatch" asking for a Dogfight (free-for-all deathmatch) without stats logging (I suck, and wanted to be forgiven for early blunders!). No matches. So, I created a game - 30 seconds later, I had a full server! Less than a minute later, my cablemodem was happily hosting a deathmatch in the skies. As host, I had no lag - and other players weren't complaining or flying particularly badly, so I think they were doing okay too. Voice chat takes a little getting used to, but it's actually quite nice to hear other players say things like "nice!", "that wasn't kind" and so on. The sound quality was very clear, and it was very friendly. I like friendly. The game itself was awesome fun; I came in 3rd (of 6), and really enjoyed the experience.

Anyway, if anyone who reads this is on XBox Live, my handle is MorphicFields, and I'm up to try any game I have.

Talking of which, I need to buy more games. :-)
Mood: happy
Music: Black Sabbath - Wicked World

House Judiciary Committee Strikes!

This is a good example of wheels in motion - the Leviathan has noticed that Ohio's election was quite corrupt, and now it is at least appearing to be hungry for answers. It's good to see the House doing its job!

A quick precis (lifted from blackboxvoting.com, original poster David):

1) Warren County lockdown - The admin building where votes were counted was locked down on election night and the public and the press excluded from the process. County officials claimed this was done in response to a terrorist warning that neither the FBI , nor Blackwell's office knew of,.

2) Perry County counting discrepencies - Poll books examined after the election show more votes cast than actual voters voting. Computer errors were blamed for other problems where votes were counted twice.

3) Perry County registration peculiarities- Very high percentage of registered voters in the county (91%) many registered in the same year and lacking signatures on file.

4) Unusual results in Butler County - A Supreme Court candidate for office received 5,000 votes more than did the Kerry ticket, whereas the Bush ticket got 40,000 more votes than the Republican judicials candidate.

5) Unusual results in Cuyahoga County - Unusually high votes for third party candidates (in one instance, 215 votes for one candidate versus 8 votes for all third-party candidates combined in 2000).

6) Spoiled Ballots - Undervotes for president in one county were as high as 25% (6,000 votes!), with a total of 93,000 for the state.

7) Franklin County overvote - 4,258 votes counted for a precinct with only 800 registerd voters.

8) Miami County vote discrepency - 19,000 votes were added to election totals that had been missed, all for Bush.

9) Mahoning County machine problems - Numerous voters reported problems with not being able to select Kerry on voting machines which defaulted to Bush.

10) Machine shortages - In Franklin County long lines were found in predominantly Democratic precincts despite the fact that 68 extra machines were available. Also, 77 machines malfunctioned in the course of the day.

The precis actually understates the allegations in the document itself, but I'm too tired to post more!
Mood: tired
Music: Fields of the Nephilim - Moonchild

Blown PSU

If you noticed any downtime today, we had a PSU in our database server die on us. I had a replacement on hand, and everything worked fine when I got into fix it (midnight!) - but it was down until I did that.

Compaq Proliant 3000 parts are becoming hard to come by. Time to start whining for nicer servers again!
Mood: tired
Music: Iron Maiden - Sanctuary

Electoral Fraud

I'm not really one to cry wolf, these days. I tend(ed) to believe that Bush had actually won the election, and was fully prepared to move on, deal with it for four years, and hope for a better result in 2008.

However, there is definitely something rotten in Denmark - or more precisely, Wyoming. Check this out; if you look down the registered voters column for general elections you will notice that Wyoming's citizens are amazingly enthusiastic about voting - in fact 106% of eligible voters had a vote recorded. That's 231,876 more voters than were registered - spooky!

If you check out BlackBoxVoting.com, one of the major advocates of a transparent voting machine system prior to the election (and affiliated with Bruce Schneir and other luminaries of the security community), one can find a number of interesting strories. A Join-Select-Committee has been appointed to investigate voting machines. The General Accounting Office of Congress is auditing them. The New York Times are running a story on buggy machines. It seems that the world is finally starting to notice!

Noticing not a moment too soon, to be honest. In the past, late exit polls have consistently (for 100 years!) been an accurate barometer of voting trends - accurate to an average of 0.5%. This time, however, they are way off - and more off in the states that mattered. Ohio (a Diebold state), for example, shows around a 6% discrepency between exit polls and the final result. This could be indicative of a fundamental change in exit polling success rates, but that would be without historical precedent. The UC Berkley Quantitative Research Team (supported by MIT) agree, finding a significant likelihood that election machines helped Bush win the Sunshine State. (Unfortunately, statistical evidence isn't perfect - but in a secret ballot, it's the best evidence we have for now).

One reason that this is the best evidence that we have can be found in the outright obstruction of justice coming from several election official's offices. Combining several sources of data already cited, you can come up with the following list:

• The Supervisor of Elections has unreasonably delayed providing information.
  
• The certification was based on inadequate and incomplete information regarding the election results.
  
• Some or all of the information requested on Nov. 2, 2004 by Black Box Voting is still missing from 59 of the 179 voting precincts, including portions of or all of the voting machine tapes for those 59 precincts, which are a vital part of official paper record of the election results from those precincts.
  
• Complete information on problems with the voting machines prior to and during the election has not been provided.
  
• Complete information relating to memory card failures during the election has not yet been provided.
  
• Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided. Despite repeated requests, the Elections office has refused to provide to the Volusia County Democratic party the official election results, now stating that those results will not be available until December 1, 2004.
  
• The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for.
  
• In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results.
  
• Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished.
  
• An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004.
  
• The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted.
  
• According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.
  
• Franklin County, Indiana, have actually reversed an election result. Voting machines gave a Republican victory by switching Democratic votes to the Libertarians - a manual recount showed that the Democrats had won the County Commissioner seat.
  
• Carteret County, NC, has admitted that users were allowed to keep voting after voting machines had run out of storage space - and none of the later votes were counted. North Carolina is considering a state-wide re-election as a result.
  

I could go on, but that's enough grist for the mill for now. Bear in mind that the media aren't reporting it particularly well at all, but there are recount requests pending in New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio and New Mexico - all voting machine states. Now that the New York Times has noticed the problems with machines, I think the rest of the media will catch on to the story that's brewing: the election is not provably won, yet. Both major parties need to wake up, and support investigations (Kerry/Edwards' campaign has been quietly supporting recount efforts, but hasn't peeped publically).
Mood: relaxed
Music: Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills

Snow!

The more it snows

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom),

On snowing.

And nobody knows

(Tiddely pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely pom),

Are growing.
Mood: tired
Music:

I used to run this!

Which OS are You?

Mood: sick
Music:

YES!

I'm not awake, but have to post this Guantanamo decision. It's not SCOTUS, but finally the judicial system gets its teeth into the matter...
Mood: tired
Music:

Heh - oops

Anyone else see what's wrong with this bit of code from a recent build of our Horizons issue tracker?

"Your report has been recorded in the TSG Issue Tracking System [TITS]. Thank you..."

Unfortunately, updating it to the new company isn't much better, since it'd now be ZITS.
Mood: happy
Music: None

My seafood lasagne recipe

I promised this to a couple of people, and can't entirely remember to whom it was promised. I'm 99% sure that everyone interested reads my blog, so here it is!

3/4 fill a big pot of water, with a dash (about a tablespoon) of extra-virgin olive oil, and a sprinkling of Oregano. Start it boiling (assuming your stove is slow like mine, and it takes a while to get to the boil!). Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Heat a frying pan, with enough extra-virgin olive oil to keep things from sticking (amount varies by state of pan!). Add in half a chopped onion, cook until onion is soft but not brown. Add in a sliced green pepper, chopped fresh garlic, a big pinch of oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, a little lemon pepper. Mix vigorously. Throw in a small piece of butter (you can use something healthy, but butter really helps with the consistency), and then add in a can of tuna, a can of shrimp, and a can of crab-meat - making sure to drain off the brine from each of these first. Mix thoroughly, and cook on a low-medium heat, turning regularly (it's done when it starts to resemble a fish-mince).

In a second saucepan, boil two cups of milk, and a stick of butter. Stir a lot, until you have a seething, yellow liquid. Add cheese in until you have a thick - slightly lumpy - cheese sauce that either won't hold more cheese or tastes great. Add in a teaspoon of yellow mustard.

Add lasagne noodles to the boiling pot, cook for about 10 minutes until they are soft. Meanwhile, simmer the fishmeat, and stir the cheesy sauce. Prepare the lasagne pan (grease it, optionally line with foil).

Lay out a layer of soft noodles on the pan base. Smother with ricotta cheese, enough to hold it together. Cover with a base of the fish-mince, and then pour enough cheese sauce to cover it. Add another layer of noodles, more ricotta, more cheese sauce - repeat until the pan is full, being careful to have enough noodles to cover the top of the lasagne. The top layer needs a thick coating of ricotta, and all the remaining cheese sauce. Sprinkle with oregano, and add parsley to the top.

Then its decision time. For a really soft lasagne, cover it in foil (I recommend this) - some prefer slightly tougher noodles, and a 'brown baked' top appearance, for which you omit the cover.

Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes. Check on it a couple of times while it cooks to make sure it isn't boiling cheese over the top.

It's ready to eat. :-)
Mood: tired
Music: None

One other thought

Kerry was a really poor choice of candidate. His thoughtful wafflings often came across as indecisive, he wasn't very good at staying on-message, and his charisma really didn't appeal to many outside of the Democratic base. Sad to say, the US seems to vote for decisiveness over thoughtfulness, conviction over fact, and a folksy attitude over a polite, academic/patriochial visage. (In recent memory, this was true for Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jnr. - Bush Snr. really only ever won because of Reagan's coat-tails). Kerry had near perfect-storm conditions: an unpopular war (although it's not as unpopular as one might think), a floundering economy, healthcare crisis, mass job losses - and he still couldn't appeal to people. Polls were pretty clear - Not Bush would have won a huge margin, but simply not being Bush isn't enough when the public don't like you. :-(

Sorry Kerry. That's why I could never stand and win, either.
Mood: thirsty
Music: None

So, it's all over

Kerry just conceded, and Bush is returned to the whitehouse - this time having actually won an election. The popular vote ended up favour Bush by a large margin, and while Ohio was close, it wasn't close enough to really merit a long battle over provisional votes.

I have a few concerns about the election, particularly in Ohio. Diebold voting machines were used, and lacked a paper-trail - so we can't really trust the results. Voters were stuck in line for hours (they were still voting 5 hours after the polls closed!), and judicial orders to offer paper ballots to those waiting in line were ignored. Florida also used Diebold machines, although I suspect that the margin was great enough in the sunshine state that it didn't make a great deal of difference.

So why did the polls (including my math) get it wrong? There are a number of factors. The first is young-person turnout. Turnout was really low in young-person dominated areas; Boone County, for example, barely topped 55% turnout. Overall (nationwide), only 17% of the share of the vote was comprised of younger voters - despite a huge increase in registrations and turnout. Thousands of youngsters will apparently turnout to support Kerry at a rally (with Springsteen playing), and then not vote. Disgraceful, in my opinion. Exit polls are showing that a lot of the increase in voter turnout was comprised of Republicans bussing in evangelical groups. They are also indicating that the undecided camp didn't really swing one way or the other - they didn't vote at all! That threw out conventional wisdom on 2/3 undecideds favouring the challenger, at which point the polls were actually about right - and the favoured interpretation of the polls was wrong. There was also the very late October surprise, Usama Bin Laden's videotape intervention. Despite the fact that this really should have served to remind Americans that Bin Laden is not only on the loose, but stronger than ever - it didn't. Instead, it reminded them that Bush is "going after terrorists" - and gave him a decent last minute poll boost. I wonder if this would be the case if the tape had gone out unedited, with the criticism of Kerry intact.

Anyway, Bush won and we're stuck with it. I'm pretty bummed about it, to be honest, since this means an enlivened attack on our civil liberties, religious freedoms, more absurd foreign policies (look out Iran!), more deficits, more poverty, even worse healthcare, and is likely to be seen as an endorsement of the neo-cons in the Pentagon. That said, there isn't much question about Bush's victory, and it's hard to say that he isn't legitimately President, this time. So, much as I did when Thatcher was in power, I'll accept the verdict, and remain a vocal opponent of whatever perceived wrongdoing I may find.

A plea to everyone as depressed about this as I am: don't give up on politics. We have the chance to make Bush a lame duck when Senate/House elections come along next time. Bush doesn't have the 60 votes required to beat a Senate philibuster; make concerns known to your Senators, make noise about the issues, and let the checks and balances keep a curb on things. Use the judicial system to continue challenging injustice. It's really easy to cry, become truly apathetic/alienated, and just give up - but that just ensures that things get worse.

I do wonder about the Democrats, now. Dean transformed the party, and the grass-roots mobilized as never before - and turned out to be irrelevant, because the grass-roots who shout so loudly don't get off their butts to vote. Daschle is gone, so the Senate Democrats are probably going to change a lot. The Democrats were very badly defeated outside of urban areas across the country. Something is going to have to change, and I suspect that there will be much soul-searching. My suggestion is to find a charismatic candidate who talks about important issues. Bill Clinton was a great candidate - we need to clone him!
Mood: sad
Music: None

Ugh, and a pat on the back for me

I'm typing this one handed, my right hand firmly braced as a result of a sprain. I'll blog about that when I can type above 5 wpm. Anyway, I just wanted to say that after my incredible poll binge, it makes me happy to (a) discover that John Zogby shares the same hunches as I do (with my third method), and (b) the person behind electoral-vote.com is none other than Professor Andrew Tennenbaum, legendary computer science professor! His statistics are much better than mine, but it makes me feel better that I came close to his...

Now, here's hoping for a high turnout and good weather tomorrow.
Mood: tired
Music: None

Yay!

Noah's Ark just called, and Bitbucket's surgery (spaying) went very well, and she's already moving around and growling at people. :-) She should be home tomorrow. Woot.

Full blog update to come later. I was just very happy with the news.
Mood: happy
Music: None

Interesting read

I just re-read The Right To Read, by Richard M. Stallman. It's not the greatest piece of literary style, but the content is good. It really bothers me that society is going this way.

More on IndyMedia: the FBI were able to get around the normal notification requirements of a warrant by issuing the warrant to RackSpace, and then hitting them with a gag order (Patriot Act, I believe). That makes it illegal for RackSpace to tell anyone, including IndyMedia, what the legal justification of the warrant was, thereby making it impossible for IndyMedia to seek legal recourse. This loophole would make it possible for police to raid any rental property, without notification of the actual tennant/lessor. This is legal according to the letter of the law, but clearly violates the spirit.

There is some good news, though. Microsoft have announced that they are fundamentally reviewing the role of Palladium/Trusted Computing in Longhorn - with an announcement due at the end of the year. All the indications are that it will be massively refocussed on corporate document control/corporate execution environments, rather than a wider DRM scheme. I might be able to live with that, depending upon the details. I will never buy hardware or software that prevents me from installing/writing software when I want to, on the platform of my choice, or with the requirement of third party consent (whether through law, or through a Digital Rights Management scheme). I urge all my readers to do the same. If a requirement of signed/approved binaries were to take even a small foothold, it wouldn't be long before it was effectively illegal (under the DMCA) and impossible (due to hardware) to run free software. Licensing/bonding of programmers would not be far behind, and the corporate stranglehold over IT would be complete.

That said, a trusted architecture could be very useful - as long as I, or other administrators - are the ones trusted by the hardware/software. Only permitting execution/installation of signed/approved binaries on corporate networks would be a very good thing: no more malware, no more crap on workstations that the users don't own, and no more worries of corrupted binaries destroying things by accident. It's a fine line.
Mood: happy
Music: Inkubus Sukkubus - Supernature

Indymedia, The Debate

Presidental Debates

The debate last night was an interesting contrast of style and substance. Kerry was on message, and hammered home point after well argued poing. President Bush was trying very hard to be humorous (it came off as rather forced, in my opinion), and was absolutely demolished on Social Security, Jobs and Healthcare - and didn't do too well on Education. Early snap polls agree with me: Bush had his strongest debate showing yet, but polls all show either Kerry winning by a large margin, or a tie (depending upon the bias of the news organization! ABC News and Fox News favouring Bush should be no surprise, and even they called it a draw). Of course, snap polls are not to be relied upon; snap polls showed Gore and Walter Mondale winning debates that were later judged a loss. There is one troubling sign from this debate: Kerry referenced Cheney's daughter in a question on Gay Marriage (I thought he did so very tactfully), and Lynn Cheney is in full-on "angry mom" mode. I've seen a couple of journalists echo her criticism of Kerry - this one needs to be spun carefully, or the mud will stick. After three excellent debate performances, it would be a shame to go down because of an angry mom who can't accept that her daughter doesn't choose to be gay.

IndyMedia.org

IndyMedia.org are an umbrella for the publishing of independent media stories from around the world. They don't currently have a Missouri section (anyone who wants to start one would have my technical support and any financial backing I can muster, by the way). A few days ago, they were contacted by Italian and Swiss media outlets and forced to redact a photograph showing local police carefully photographing faces of demonstrators in a WTO demonstration. (Intimidation tactics such as this are increasingly common from authorities in Western democracies, unfortunately) The Italian government then publically branded IndyMedia "supporters of terrorists", and used an international treaty to request the seizure of their servers. FBI agents then contacted IndyMedia's host, Rackspace, in the USA. Rackspace pointed out that Indy's servers were in the UK - so the FBI showed up at their London hosting facility (accompanied by UK agents), and confiscated several IndyMedia servers. IndyMedia were not notified, and Rackspace was placed under a gagging order preventing them from telling IndyMedia what was going on. Today, IndyMedia finally got their drives back - and are still unaware of any pending investigation/prosecution against them.

In fairness to the FBI and UK authorities, they probably had to comply with the Italian/Swiss request. Treaties are pretty clear on required cooperation with signatory countries. What is not acceptable in this case is the Italian violation of European Convention on Human Rights on a number of counts: Freedom to demonstrate (free of legal encumberance), freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Privacy rights do not apply to the officers taking photographs: they were doing so in public, and thus cannot reasonably expect anonymity/invisibility.

A more important issue is at stake, though, and that is the freedom to report - whether from a biased or objective standpoint - what's going on in a Western democracy. There are already curbs being placed on this; limited media access to campaign events (and restricted coverage of "first ammendment zones", the only spaces in which protests are permitted at rallies for either political party), media abstention of negative coverage in Iraq, the complete lack of media coverage of police oppression of demonstrations, and so forth.

We need an independent media, and it's important that we protect IndyMedia as best we can. I'm open to suggestions, and would be willing to help setup mirrors and similar as needed.
Mood: accomplished
Music: My PC fan pretending to be an aeroplane

Great website

I just happened across this site. It's basically an ugly version of a site I was thinking of making.

Back to setting up a new FreeBSD server.
Mood: happy
Music: None

Interesting

I had a few troubles with my new video card tonight - distortion in SWG, and the occasional lockup. Research indicated that it's a problem between my motherboard and GeForce FX (any chipset) cards. Apparently, the nVidia card asks for a ridiculous amount of power in AGP 8X mode. Switching it down to 4X confirmed this - it actually went faster, and all the problems went away. Yay.

I'm glad that the gigantic hack that is AGP is finally going away. PCI Express looks like a much saner solution, and should let RAID arrays and gigabit ethernet benefit from increased bandwidth rather than hacks such as PCI-64.
Mood: accomplished
Music: None

New toys

A certain game I'm not allowed to talk about is really hard to play without a joystick, so after being paid I ran down to Best Buy and picked up an Extreme 3D Pro joystick. It's great - twist handle, twelve buttons, very stable. It's not quite as smooth as the old Sidewinder 3D Pro - but unlike the Sidewinder, it's available and affordable ($39.95). I can't recommend the joystick enough for games that benefit from one.

Today, I had a forced upgrade. I took a very short nap, and when I woke up WinXP was in 640x480x16! A message informed me that my Nvidia card had stopped responding (amazingly enough, no bluescreen for something as major as the video hardware stopping!). I tried rebooting - and text mode was really distorted, and graphics modes wouldn't display at all in Linux or Windows! A quick power-down and strip of hardware indicated a problem: the video card fan had stuck, and there was a bit of scorching on the circuit board. Yikes. I can't really do without a working PC at home, so I headed out to Best Buy again (they must love me!), and picked up an nVidia GeoForce 5500 FX for $150. It has 256mb video RAM, 8x AGP, and a 240mhz internal bus speed. The difference (once I finished wading through BIOS settings) is startling: everything is brighter, crisper, and smoother. The colour handling in particular is much better - composite armour in Star Wars: Galaxies is really smooth, and the lighting in Doom III is even smoother. It is also a lot faster - I can play Doom III smoothly on High Detail with nothing turned down. SWG was fast, even in downtown Coronet with Anti-Aliasing enabled. Wow.

In other news, Bitbucket went into her first heat - quite a bit earlier than we expected. The common advice is to wait until 6 months to get a kitten spaid, particularly if there have been health issues in the young kitten (Bitty was something of a runt, and was pretty malnourished when we got her - she's fine, and chubby, now!). Unfortunately, the poor dear is rubbing everything that might be friendly, meowing all the time, and is really quite desperate. It's off to Noah's Ark for a quick snip this week...
Mood: relaxed
Music: Inkubus Sukkubus - Supernature

Oh boy!

Wow, so much to blog about. JTLS beta (which I can't talk about), SpaceShipOne wins the X-Prize, Doom 3 for Linux, VP Debate tonight.... overwhelming kitteny goodness!

Ansari X-Prize

I've had a dream since I was a little kid of going to space, and wanting to explore. We've explored most of the frontiers of this planet (the exception being some ocean regions in which the pressure is so high that submersibles implode), and at the rate we're wrecking things we need an exit-option to survive. That, and we simply don't know what's out there - we have pictures, but as the various Mars missions have shown, without actual presence, it's amazing how little we know. SpaceShipOne is a big step on the way to Low Earth Orbit; it's roughly equivalent to the Air Force's X-15 Demonstrator (Rutan also worked on the original X-15!), meaning it has a very short exo-atmospheric loitering time and nowhere near the velocity required to eachieve Low Earth Orbit. Rutan indicated that LOE is his next target; it's not an easy feat by a long shot (you need to go faster, be able to maneuver/decelerate, and survive re-entry), but given that he exceeded the X-15 requirements in a few months, I'm very hopeful. As Heinlein once said, once you are in LOE, you are half way to everywhere. So, fingers crossed!

Doom 3 For Linux

It's good that Id Software have finally released Doom 3 for Linux. I'm a little dissappointed that it uses OSS and not ALSA for sound, but otherwise it's a Really Good Thing. I can now play Doom 3 in my favoured OS at home, meaning less rebooting. Woot.
Mood: happy
Music: New Model Army - Space

Woooooooooooooot!

I just received my invite to the Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed beta. The download has started, I've signed the NDA, and that's about all I can say!

The amazing thing is that I still came to work. Wanna play. I'll still watch the VP debate tonight, but otherwise - wanna play, wanna play, wanna play!
Mood: happy
Music: Distillers - Liberated

Taking my own medicine

I just replaced Bind with "dnscache" by Daniel Bernstein on our home firewall. So far, it's a lot faster at name resolution - and no glitches. Bind really is the 800lb gorilla of the DNS world! I also setup a Squid proxy (non-transparent), and am giving it a go. I've used it to speed up client's LANs before - never for a small network. So far, so good. It's cacheing seems to speed up a lot of sites, particularly ones I visit a lot.
Mood: accomplished
Music: Iron Maiden - No More Lies

Interesting...

Apparently, something has been rotten in the Bush clan for quite a few years. Given my audience, there isn't much need to harp on about Bush Junior's faults here. Bush Senior - as VP - helped setup Saddam Hussein's regime, supported the Taliban, and is widely alleged to have been in the pocket of Arab industrialists. Now, it turns out, President Bush's grandfather helped Nazi Germany, at least until he was stopped by the US government in 1942.

Admittedly, IBM, Hewlett Packard and others also had nazi ties. I just think it's interesting that the Bush rot apparently goes back yet another generation....
Mood: tired
Music: None

Yay

I feel a whole lot better. After a nasty night's sweating, I suddenly had no fever - and my head is clearing up. I slept through the morning, and then worked my arse off for the afternoon - and still had energy to watch the Daily Show's Debate Special (it was great - highly recommended), clean the front room, play some SWG, play with the kitten, and gently whine that SpamAssassin 3.0 isn't available for FreeBSD yet.

I also found myself thinking that I wish my programming efforts directly helped people. Persist.net (about to be GPLed on my new website!), firewall work, and helping on MLUG/the various FreeBSD lists are good and all - but do they really make the world better? I mean, it's nice for programmers to be able to (somewhat) efficiently access SQL data as objects, even if some relational-theory purists scream that accessing relational data in an object metaphor is evil. It's great that clients keep nasties out, and it's great that I've helped a few newbie-geeks out - but does that really make a difference overall? Part of me really wants to do something that genuinely makes life easier for the less privileged.

It occurs to me that the Horizons project does just that, in a way. It massively streamlined a mental health charity's operations, meaning they are helping more people than ever, and can quickly get the documents they need in crisis situations. It isn't exactly charity work on my part, though - I'm paid for it, and we're looking to resell it to other mental health agencies. Does the fact that I make money off of it invalidate the fact that it does make a difference for the mentally ill? Part of me feels good about it (even if I bitch and moan about the gruntwork sometimes!), but I wonder if that counts as civic service. Maybe I need to make a Linux live-CD that talks to screen readers/brail TTYs, and provides a blind-person accessible interface to Links, Mutt, and other excellent text-based (and therefore screen-reader friendly) tools. Maybe I need to lose my middle-class guilt and accept that what I'm doing is already making a difference, and keep focussing on the projects I love.

Lastly, my condolences to the family/loved ones of Hans Bakker/Mclight. He was killed in a car wreck in France, after driving Richard Stallman to the airport. Two other proflific geeks were injured, one seriously (but not critically). I met Mclight in an IRC discussion once. I don't even really remember what was being talked about, but it's a shame that he's no longer around. :-(
Mood: awake
Music: Iron Maiden - Afraid To Shoot Strangers

First Presidential Debate

To my shame, I felt really sick and slept through the actual debate. I watched it on FoxNews webcast a few hours after it happened. I'd completely forgotten to get MythTV to record it - I've corrected that, and the VP debate and next Presidential debates are now scheduled for recording.

I've been researching context/importance of the debates. The first thing to note is that in previous elections, the debates have been very important in persuading swing voters. Polling shows that a theoretical 100% capture of swing voters who say the debates will largely make up their mind would put either candidate 18 points ahead; this isn't going to happen, but it's a good snapshot. The second thing to note is that immediate reaction isn't necessarily what matters; every immediate reaction poll showed Gore winning the first 2000 debate by about 8 percentage points, but after 48 hours he was widely judged to have lost it. Interestingly, he wasn't judged to have lost it on the grounds of substance, but rather because of "reaction shots" showing him sighing, looking angry/impatient, and his demeanour. This gels with earlier debate polling showing that style is often more important than substance, unless you have both in spades - Ross Perot, Clinton, and Carter all benefited from substance and passable style. Reagan won entirely on style, as did Bush in 2000.

I enjoyed the debate. Kerry did a very good job of staying on message, on the offensive, and of giving good counter-arguments to every Bush jibe. President Bush really did badly; the all-important reaction shots showed him grimacing, flinching, clutching his stomach, and at times looking like a 7th-grader being told off for throwing stones. He often had a hard time filling his time slots, and kept going back to repeating the same phrases over and over (much like the "lockbox" from Gore's much ridiculed 2000 debates). His substance was generally lacking, although he did at least seem to largely know what was going on. I really liked his gaffes; "Of course we are going to catch Saddam Hussein - I mean Osama Bin LAden", referring to terrorists as "folks", and when asked about the Iraq threat stating "they, the enemy, attacked us". When it was pointed out that Al-Quaida attacked, he replied "urrrrm, I know that Osama Bin Laden attacked us! I knew that."

Kerry's oratory was interesting. He used short sentences, and made sucinct points - but still layered facts in a very convincing way. He was also studiously calm, keeping a perfect poker face, merely nodding and taking notes during the debate.

The initial reaction was very interesting. Snap online polls on "who won" showed Kerry averageing 70% and Bush 30%. Polls of undecided voters also concluded that Kerry came out ahead by a large margin, and several voters said they would now vote for him - and most said they now felt more favourably towards him. The morning press was full of Kerry praise, with even the Houston Chronicle and the Arizona Wildcat grudgingly praising Kerry. It is interesting that even Republican spinmiester Roe was only able to say that the debate "left things about the same, us with a small advantage".

We won't know if those initial reactions are relevant for another few days. I hope they are, and I hope that Kerry can keep the momentum up. We need the Comeback Kerry right now!
Mood: tired
Music: Queen - Tie Your Mother Down

Feeling better about work

I'm feeling a lot better about zero1, now. Steve looks like he's getting his act together again. There are still a few "pie in the sky" moments in his longer range plans, but overall I think it'll work out. I just need to be patient. I'm still a little annoyed over his treatment of minions, but now that I understand his rationale (and just how cranky he was in general today!), I'm a bit more hopeful - and feeling less guilty!

Had an interesting fight with SQL Server today. Apparently, trying to drop 60,000+ items into a single, serialized transaction was really stupid. I knew that - but did it anyway, probably because I wasn't thinking straight. Oddly enough, SQL Server isn't exactly responsive when you do that to it! Still, the baseline Horizons billing code works without it - so I think all will be well for my meeting tomorrow. I hate meetings.
Mood: thankful
Music: New Model Army - No Pain

Sweet!

I happened upon something really cool, thanks to a side issue on Slashdot. I've been running Nvidia drivers on both my MythTV and main desktop system for a while, and they've been plenty fast enough for normal use... well, it turns out I wasn't even using their accelerated features, just the fact that they are fast cards. Adding the line option "RenderAccel" "true" to the Nvidia section of my XF86Config has made my system positively zoomy. Yay! MythTV is better for it, too.
Mood: happy
Music: Queen - Long Away

Ugh

August's campaign blackout has hurt Kerry. Following the Republican National Convention hoopla, my calculations show Bush winning by 1-3 states based on an average of polling data. Not good. Kerry needs to get out and really hit on the issues that he's strong on (and Bush is weak on): the economy, jobs, education. With record job-destruction, surely there are enough people upset at the current economic climate to think about that for an election?

As an aside, Nader isn't having as much of an effect this time... but his 1-2% is enough to lose Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin for Kerry. So, if you read my blog and were thinking of voting for Nader - DON'T, unless you want four more years of King George.

I happen to think that the US needs a third party, but the only way to achieve a credible third-party alternative is not to try and go straight for the "gold" of President. Build up a local base, win local elections. Then win state elections. Then win some congressional/senatorial seats. THEN think about the gold standard. Patience is a real virtue when it comes to the emergence of third parties. Just witness Labour in England, or the current liberals in Canada.
Mood: thoughtful
Music: New Model Army - You Weren't There

SWG Fun

I picked up Advertising III in SWG the other day, figuring that having my shop on the map might help a little bit. Little did I expect to make 6 sales (mostly cheap furniture) in 2 days, let alone get myself mail from happy customers! I logged in this afternoon, to find two people in my shop buying furniture. I filled a special order, and they are advertising me to their guild because they liked my store/stuff. Woot.

I spent an hour or two stocking up (using my newfound profits), and now have a variety of houses, generators, furniture and lighting. Very nifty. Hopefully, it'll sell as quickly as my first batch!

Afterwards, I got the crazy idea to go Overt and attack (NPC) rebels around Anchorhead, Tatooine. My assult went really well for a while, taking down lots of rebels, a couple of camps, some crazed hermits, and even a rebel Leiutenant General. Then I ventured too close to town by accident, and a red dot started to head at me, at great speed. Faster than my burst run (he was burst running, too!). A (player) master combat medic was inbound! Getting away wasn't working too well, so I kneecap-shotted him a couple of times. That bought be a little time, and I pulled out my speederbike - just as his mind poison hit me. Zoop - from full mind to none, but not incapacitated (you can't get incapped from poison, just drained). I got on my bike and jetted out - amazingly enough, still alive. Re-reading my combat logs, I hit him for maybe 300 points total - and he did over 1,000 to me. Owie.

I headed back to Mos Eisley, and went started the timer back to Covert. I then caught a shuttle to Theed, normally very safe for Imperials - only to walk into the middle of a raid! A crazed wookie squad leader named Longhorn and three rebels were gunning down Imperials left, right and center. I ran for it - they headshotted me, I died. Oops.

Despite this, I did manage to make a good 4,000 off of my raid. Even with the cloning costs, and my 400 credit tip to the medic who healed me up afterwards, that's a profitable run!
Mood: relaxed
Music: None

Armadillos's

I was just reading Armadillo Aereospace's regular updates. It's good to see that Carmack isn't impeded by his rocket crash - but seems to be coming back stronger as a result. As he pointed out, he could crash one of his rockets a week for 10 years and still spend less than SpaceShip One!

Also, congratulations are due for the baby Carmack.
Mood: happy
Music: Iron Maiden - Wasted Years

PIX's SUCK

So the PIX saga continues. On TSG's LAN, it runs at 9.8mbit/s - not too shoddy. On the client's connection, it tops out at 57kbit/s! Teh suxxor!

The FreeBSD box in the exact same place tops out at around 95mbit/s - more than enough to fill their 6mbit/s connection. It has more features, is a LOT more secure than the PIX, and cost... nothing. So of course, the client is pissed off and won't believe that anything free/cheap could possibly be as good as a $2,500 piece of shit firewall.

I should have told them that it cost $10,000 and can make toast.
Mood: thirsty
Music: None

Blogging again

So life is almost back to normal. I worked another twelve hour day yesterday, hopefully the last in this particular work spree... although I'm set for a long stint today (more on that later) Why have I been working so much? TSG no longer exists! For IRS reasons, we are now Zero1Tek (domain name coming soon). I'm going to break the update down into sections.

The TSG/Zero1Tek Saga
Years ago, TSG got behind on it's taxes. Not very far behind (for a $250,000 turnover company), a few thousand dollars. We agreed a payment plan with the IRS; paying it was tricky sometimes, but we were gradually clawing our way out. Then, we were pursuaded to sign up with a company called Omni Financial who specialize in reducing tax debts - and had impeccable (fraudulent, in my opinion now - Omni, if you read this, sue me! I dare you!) references. They ate about $5k of our money, and kept asking for more money and more paperwork. They also gave us some really bad advice. According to them, the only way for them to renegotiate with the IRS was for us to default on our existing payment plan. Our former accountant didn't disagree, so we did it... landing ourselves $20k in tax debt, and $35k in penalty fees. Omni stopped talking to us, so we ditched them - but by this point, the IRS were adamant that it was pay all $55k or die. We don't have $55k in liquid assets, that's a lot of cash to just have lying around. We do have $20k available. The IRS offered to write off all of the penalty fees if we pay the $20k and close TSG. We checked around, and there's nothing illegal about closing a failing business and opening a new one. So, TSG is no more. I was laid off on Friday. Steve's new company, Zero1Tek, has since hired me. We bought the assets from TSG's liquidation sale, conveniently including all our clients, contracts, and none of our debts. So from the ashes has arisen a phoenix, resplete with several thousand a month in profits, no debt, and a perfect tax record. Not too shabby!

Anyway, a downside of liquidating is that you have to have a completely clean slate, accounting-wise. That meant that we couldn't just keep using our existing office administration system, save in a really stripped down version. I worked day and night for two weeks to create a new one, in C#. It's a full-blown Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), it isn't quite finished but it does enough to be useful (and as much as the old system!). It's a 3-tier architecture in .NET, and when finished it will truly rock our world. For now, it works moderately well - and that's enough for me to be able to go back to a semi-sensible schedule.

So why am I working late tonight... PIX firewalls and incompetent competition

We picked up a client who have a Cisco 1605 router and a PIX 506. They used to have this kit hooked up to a DSL line, and they wanted it switched to a new Mediacom line with 3mbit/s download and 512kbit/s upload. Sounds like nothing a PIX shouldn't be able to handle, right? Well, their former consultants hadn't told them how their setup was configured, given them passwords, or given them installation media. We had to practically beat the passwords out of the former consultant, and they were no help at all on the existing configuration. It turns out that this is probably because they were embarrassed by it: the 1605 router was doing nothing at all! It didn't have to do any routing - the DSL company did that. It didn't have to do NAT - the PIX did that. It didn't have to filter the connection, the PIX did that. It didn't need OSPF, RIP or BGP - none were supported by the upstream provider, and they really aren't necessary for a tiny work LAN of 10 clients. Oh, and it was set to bridge with no IP address visible, and we couldn't get into it to configure it without resetting to factory defaults. So... we took it out of the loop completely. The PIX worked - but at 30kbit/s max. That's really crappy. The former consultant sent us a cryptic messge telling us that this was because we took the router out, and since "PIXs can't do routing, this is a critical part of the setup". Erm, PIXes speak OSPF, RIP, can NAT connections, and understand the static routes needed for a simple cable-modem just fine. After a day of wrestling with a perfectly functional PIX, I found out what the router was actually providing: a full duplex NIC, something the cablemodem (and the DSL modem before it) lacked. That's it. 100% of the functionality of a $2,000 switch was providing a 10baseT NIC at full duplex. Why did that matter? It turns out that the PIX goes REALLy slowly when connected at half duplex. Taking it to the office, putting it inline between my workstation and our LAN, and I have it performing its duties at 99.9% of it's 10baseT wirespeed. At least I solved it, but that was ridiculous!

On an amusing note, since we couldn't fix the PIX without downing their LAN, I stuck a FreeBSD firewall in place as a stopgap. Without blinking, it handled 3mbp/s firewalling without issue. It would have gone faster if the upstream had let it. 3mbp/s really isn't much to an OS that can route gigabit ethernet at wirespeed. :-)

So... since I've figured it out, why am I still here? The client wants a lasting backup FreeBSD box available for tomorrow if the obvious fix of a full-duplex switch ($30!) between the cablemodem and the PIX doesn't work. So I'm building one. I love FreeBSD, but I wish their FTP servers would go faster!
MythTV

I picked up a WinTV PVR-250 the other day. It streams TV directly into MPG2 files, rather than relying on the host to do the gruntwork. MythTV now provides crystal clear recordings! I finally finished getting the remote that ships with the PVR-250 working last night. There is something wonderful about sitting on the couch, controlling a PC-that-thinks-it-is-Tivo across the room. :-)
Mood: happy
Music: The really loud fan in the PIX on my workstation!

Jump to Lightspeed!

I just passed the first hurdle for Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed beta-testing - I'm on the list of candidates being considered! Yay!
Mood: accomplished
Music: None

Go, Kerry!

I
just finished watching John Kerry's acceptance speech to the
Democratic National Convention, and I have to say he gave me a lot of
hope. I've been a Kerry-skeptic in the past, as well as a critic of
Edwards. I now believe that they are a good choice for this election.

Kerry's speech
reminded me a lot of Blair before the 1997 election: he talked a lot
about hope, and the overwhelming theme was we can do better.
It was overwhelmingly positive in nature, and managed to include a
lot of concrete proposals as well as the usual fluff. Kerry's
frequent talk of values, hopes and aspirations was also very
reminiscent of JFK; that shouldn't be a surprise, given that JFK is
one of Kerry's heroes.

I was expecting a relatively nauseating flagwaving experience as
Kerry focused on his war-record, and America greatness. Instead, I
was greeted with aspirations I share. America should look to it's
history, and the greatness of documents such as the Constitution for
inspiration and values. Kerry actually said that equality of
opportunity, diversity, and innovation are the values on which
America is built. Hearing an American presidential candidate say
“equality of opportunity” was music to my
liberal-socialist ears! He even took the time to say that all
religions should be welcome in America.

Now for the issue-by-issue breakdown. I'm a policy-geek, so I enjoy
writing this stuff. Hopefully, someone, somewhere will find it
informative!

A large chunk of Kerry's speech focused on the armed forces, military
policy, counter-terrorism, and internationalism. It was refreshing;
he repeatedly stated that war is always a last resort, to be
prosecuted effectively and only with a concrete plan for “winning
the peace”. He talked a lot about the need to rebuild
alliances, and restore America to the status of a country that leads
by example rather than fear. He also promised to increase the size of
the military, as a means to abolishing the back-door draft (National
Guard/Reservists) that has propped up Bush's war. Predictably enough,
he also promised to be tough on nuclear proliferation. The key phrase
was definitely “the USA never goes to war because we want to,
only because we have to.”

Kerry
also talked a lot about health-care. I liked what he had to say.
Amidst the usual “will not privatize social security”
fluff that every Presidential candidate spouts, were
some true gems. Biggest of all, he said that he wanted to end the
situation in which “America will stop being the only advanced
country in the world that doesn't recognize health-care as a basic
right, not a privilege of the rich”. He promised to cut
health-insurance bills by $1,000 for everyone (a tax policy, perhaps?
A $1,000 tax credit on health-case would give every employee of TSG
comprehensive coverage including dental/vision). He promised to end
the monopoly of US drug companies that prevents the importation of
cheap drugs from Canada and Europe. He also promised faithfully to
never cut Medicare.

Kerry's education platform was also
strong. The biggest item was a concrete promise that every family
will receive a tax credit for every year and every child they have in
college. That's not quite free tuition, but it's a good start. He
also promised to stop cutting financial aid. He said that teachers
should be paid what they are worth, on a par with other essential
professionals. He advocated Head-Start, and a host of other
buzzwords. He was a little fluffy in places on this topic, but at
least concrete proposals were there.

Kerry's economic platform was
interesting. The most notable elements were a return to fiscal
responsibility, or as he put it “pay as you go”. He
sounded a lot like Clinton on this issue (crediting him for it!). He
made some concrete promises: tax breaks for the middle class, a
roll-back of tax cuts for the rich (i.e. more taxes for those over
$100,000/year), closing loopholes that let big companies pay no
taxes, and (best of all for me) he promised large tax breaks for
small businesses. He spoke out against overseas-outsourcing,
promising to reform tax law to encourage companies to employ workers
here and not elsewhere. He talked about being in favor of free-trade,
but only on a fair platform. I'm not sure if that's code for
protectionism! He made a big deal about the middle class, and their
importance to America; and also for the need to remove barriers for
the workers who strive to become middle class. Very solid, overall.

Kerry merged energy policy and
environmental policy in parts of his speech, but did both credit. He
strongly advocated research/development of just about anything that
reduces oil dependency. He promised never to go to war over oil, and
said that the way to avoid it is to no longer rely on it. He promised
never to sell national treasures in back-room deals, and promised
never to kill environmental laws at the behest of business. He
specifically talked about asthma, clean air, and clean water.

There were a few other gems:

• An amusing fluff story about John
  Kerry the father. Apparently, his daughter accidentally dropped a
  hamster cage into the sea – so Kerry dived in to save the
  little beast. That made me smile, even if it is total fluff!

  
  

• He included one definitely
  pro-choice statement.

  
  

• He talked a
  bit about the need to continue to pursue equality for women in all
  things.

  
  

• He promised to
  have an Attorney General who respects and upholds the Constitution.

  
  

Overall, a very
good speech. I'll be watching this campaign closely, so expect more
political updates!

Mood: geeky
Music: Sisters of Mercy - Empire Dam

SQL Server Replication

Someone at Microsoft took far too large a hit off the crack-pipe before implementing referential integrity constraints with replication.

Referential integrity is a good thing. Without it, SQL databases aren't particularly relational at all (Codd/Date/Pascal would argue they aren't anyway; academic high-toweredness aside, it CAN be relational enough to be a useful expression of relational calculus in actual use). A basic premise of relational calculus is that primary keys relate data in separate groupings (tables in SQL) together. SQL Server can enforce relational logic across a replicated link... but it doesn't bother to either (a) replicate data in a dependency-first order, or (b) replicate all data and then check it! The result? Perfect relational data at one end of a replication link will be borked into appearing as a conflict at the other end because it replicates the middle of some related data, fails the check, and is banished to the void.

Crack kills. So does Microsoft, some days!
Mood: weird
Music: Black Sabbath - Feels Good To Me

Yay and ugh

Ugh: I'm sick. I've had a fever, and have generally felt icky for 2 days.

Yay: we got everything sorted out regarding the house.

Another Yay: I have Cedega (WineX 4.0) running. It is really impressive - I'm running Star Wars: Galaxies under Linux (2.6.4). It's wierd, though: it can SWG, but can't run notepad!
Mood: tired
Music: None

Boudicca, Brave Hamster Queen

I checked on Boudicca (known universally as Boda) a few minutes ago, and she's passed away. No obvious cause of death other than age. I hope she died happy. If nothing else, she exceeded her life expectancy. I really miss her. :-(

Boda was a good hamster. She never once bit me, she always wanted to play/sniff my hand/walk on me, and charmed everyone into giving her sunflower seeds. I'll post a bit more when I stop crying.
Mood: depressed
Music: None

D-Day

Today is the 60th anniversary of D-Day, in which British, Canadian and American troops landed in Normandy at the start of the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi domination. I'm sitting here remembering my visits to the war memorials and cemetaries in Bayeux. Politics and modern anti-war sentiments aside, I think that today everyone who has enjoyed the relative freedoms of the post-WWII world should stop and thank our forefathers for what they did 60 years ago.
Mood: thoughtful
Music: None

Yay!

Monday night was another Bureau 13 game. It went really well (Elaine was right, our characters emphases are sufficiently different that it isn't a problem - especially now that I have some decent skill levels in my chosen areas!); we killed a demon, beat up some cultists, and managed to avoid being in the media. Fun!

Today was a heavy programming day. Tools programming is fun in that you see immediate rewards if it works (and immediate groans if it doesn't). My 2-tier plan for a Subversion-based web management console worked very well, although there were of course some implementation hiccups (not least the WIERD behavior of Win2k with my .NET service... it worked on every other machine in the office, but wouldn't correctly report that it started on the production server; I managed to work around it, but that was just plain odd). I'm about 1/2 way through switching all of our sites over to it. One clue that it works: you are looking at a site using it. :-)

I learned some interesting things during the project. The first is that the latency penalty for remoting to localhost is MUCH less than I thought it would be, pretty much on par with FreeBSD local net sockets (that's a big compliment to MS's net code, even if its syncookie handling and sequence randomization still sucks). The second is that STDIN/STDOUT redirection in .NET works really well. UNIX well. Awesome. :-)

My Freevo box now displays TV. I'm fixing the channel list right now, and it should be up and running! Yay!
Mood: happy
Music: Fields of the Nephilim - Laura

Just plain wierd

Yesterday, TSG managed to use more bandwidth than we have. I have two separate bandwidth loggers showing that our 768kbps line exceeded 900kbps for a while... and no, it's not burstable. Thank goodness we aren't charged for bandwidth on that line!
Mood: confused
Music: None

My WH40K Army

I just spent the time to go through codices and similar, and my army looks like this (501 points total):

Master of the Dark Angels (50 pts)

5-Marine Tactical Squad with Missile Launcher (70 points)

5-Marine Tactical Squad with Flamer and Frag Grenades (71 points)

5 Deathwing Terminator Marines (260 points)

1 Landspeeder (50 points)

Now I just need to finish painting everything!
Mood: tired
Music:

Yay!

Our Tranquility connection just went live again! I've done some DNS tweaks to get it working - let me know if anything breaks, please!
Mood: accomplished
Music: The Man Who Sold The World (Nirvana cover of Bowie)

Moving Office

If you are reading this, then my efforts to manage an office move weren't in vain! More later.
Mood: accomplished
Music: None

Friday Five

Kris has been doing these for a while, I figured I'd give it a shot.

1. What do you do for a living?

I'm a senior consultant at The Turner Stephenson Group, Inc., a computer consulting firm in Columbia, MO. My duties include server setup/maintenance/administration, network administration, programming (C#, Visual Basic, C++ and a little bit of Perl), managing three people. I also do software architecture for distributed systems.

I have a few sort-of other jobs. I sometimes fix people's computers for cash, especially when I need it. I'm trying to get a book published, too (not sure how much I can talk about that publically until I have an actual contract to read).

2. What do you like most about your job?

Most of it. :-) I really enjoy the process of designing a distributed n-tier system, putting together an architecture, and working with the junior programmers to implement it from the ground up (read: servers, databases, business logic layers, presentation logic, testing). It's very detailed work, but it is satisfying to start with the blueprints and come out with a working project.

I was really happy to see some software I wrote on TV the other day, as well as find it talked about in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

3. What do you like least about your job?

Occasional late paychecks, neurotic clients, and having to remember to keep my employees busy rather than just trying to do everything myself (all the while trying not to micromanage too much, nor let it go too much). In other words, I love the technical aspects of the job, but the human aspects need work!

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because...

Sometimes paychecks are late, and that can ruin a day. Sometimes something that used to work fine breaks, usually because someone finds something I'd never thought of - so I spend hours fixing a program so that it will do something it was never intended to. That can be challenging (and enjoyable), but it can also be so exhausting/frustrating that I just want to kill people. Usually, though, bad days are a result of clients who don't know much about PCs doing something dumb!

5. What other career(s) are you intereted in?

I'd consider moving completely into programming, since it is definitely my favourite part of working with TSG. I'd actually consider a demotion if it meant that I didn't have to be a manager as well! If I were to quit the computer industry (which, it has to be said, would be a very cold day in hell), i'd either go into International Law, Academe, or a political-defense related job.
Mood: happy
Music: None

Woot! My favourite emperor, ever!

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
Mood: happy
Music: Servers going hummm

Aha!

I just found out why I was unable to post to my blog the other day - the entry I had with a table had a broken form tag in it, messing up the 'post' button on my form.
Mood: relaxed
Music: Builders making holes in my office

Secure Code Seminar, MythTV

The drama in my life seems to be settling down a bit, which is good. My head cold is still being a bitch, which is bad.

I've been experimenting with a package called MythTV. Installing it was a complete pain in the arse (dependencies to resolve all over the place, and some fun and games getting the database component to work at all), but once installed I was pretty impressed. It neatly downloaded listings for my funky brand of cable TV, and offers them in an easy to use format. Watching TV is good - the TV card streams to disk, I watch the stream - meaning I can pause, rewind, forward wind (when I'm behind the actual broadcast). Recording is currently not quite as good - ALSA support for my soundcard (an Intel onboard thing) isn't very good, and Myth complains of a lack of buffers when recording; this has led to some recordings having out-of-synch sound. On the upside, it does record what I want, when I want it - so as soon as I get sound figured out properly, all will be well. It really does make TV bearable to be able to just pick from a menu of things to watch, rather than trying to be around at the right time for shows. I like TV when it's on-demand!

Yesterday, I went to Paul Mur's MSN Developer Seminar on writing secure code. About 30 people showed up; interestingly, there weren't many people from the larger consulting/development groups in town. Apparently, TSG is ahead of the curve in adopting .NET - and unusual in that we actually worry about security (catty comment: check out IDP Group for an example of our competition!). The first half of the seminar should have been titled "C++ sucks" - it covered Buffer Overruns, Arithmetic Overflows, as well as the usual range of Cross-Site Scripting, Canonicalization issues (ie. don't trust filenames!), SQL Injection, and similar. Paul had good examples for everything, including some examples that I loved showing buffer overruns in action - complete with heap dumps of the results. Very good stuff. The second half of the seminar focussed on security in .NET. Security controls are a lot more fine-grained than I thought - and you can really lock down a .NET system if you want to. That's a good thing, and I definitely learned a few tricks about how to help TSG's systems (such as sandboxing assemblies that need IO access, and restricting permissions accordingly). I was also impressed by the Forms-Based Authentication stuff - .NET makes it really easy to partition off parts of a site into admin areas, member areas and similar, without forcing Active Directory on you for authentication. The end of the seminar was a real treat - some tips'n'tricks to make Visual Studio life easier, and a contest to find the bugs in some code. I won the contest, and am now the proud owner of Writing Secure Code (2nd Edition), a book I was planning to buy with my next paycheque. So I was paid to attend the seminar, and saved $50 on the book. Sweet. :-)
Mood: happy
Music: None

Java vs. DotNet

My Java vs. .NET polemic is now available for reading. It isn't too amazing, but I had fun writing it!
Mood: tired
Music: None

Databases, Ghandi

Kris and I went to see Arun Ghandi speak last night. It was informative and quite entertaining, although it didn't turn me into a pacifist. The roots of Ghandi's argument were:

• Everything is interdependent; recognize this and try to form positive relationships with everyone (on all levels from personal to International Relations), and the world will be a better place.
  
• Getting angry is human nature, but if you perform mental exercise and focus on positive resolutions to issues that make you angry, you can turn it into a positive rather than a negative.
  
• "Right over Might" - the old argument that simply having might implies an inability to focus on what is right.
  

All of these arguments were couched in humorous tales, talk about religion, and the occasionally painful anecdote. Ghandi didn't portray himself very well; at times he came across as a demagogue for his grandfather, rather than a thinker in his own right; I think I'd have been happier if he had built on his grandfather's ideas more than happily shouting from his shadow. Still, it was a good lecture - even if I remain convinced that pacifism isn't going to work without the cooperation of everyone else. Relations, Conflict Resolution and possibly Intervention remain the three pillars of International Relations in my book - even though Intervention should be used much more carefully than it is by the current Administration.

On a less theoretical note, today I've been wrestling with a client's database. They have kept their records in a WordPerfect file for years, using a table to roughly emulate a poorly designed flat-file database. TSG created a relational database system (wrapped in a PHP website) for them that does the same thing - the last challenge was getting the data out. It took me several hours to transform data from WordPerfect into Excel, fix the formatting errors (WP puts linefeeds in odd places), break the table into subtables, and then import it into PostgreSQL. I messed it up horribly the first time, but the second try worked pretty well. PostgreSQL did a good job of catching referential-integrity errors, and Excel/Access provided me with the tools I needed to make things usable; overall, though, it was a giant pain in the arse.

Mood: tired
Music: None

Dean Comes Third

The Iowa Caucusses result could have been better. Kerry - of whom I have a pretty poor opinion (he's pro Iraq war; he does have a semi-decent platform on healthcare, the environment and education - but it reeks of 'pie in the sky' vision, lacking any real detail) came first, and Edwards (a 'help the middle class' economic policy, one free year of college tuition, pro-war/patriot act, and with such a piddly little healthcare reform policy that it might as well not exist) came second. Dean, probably because he's a leftist with vision, came third by quite a large margin. He's not out of the race, but if he doesn't do better in New Hampshire then he may well be. :-(

What's really interesting is looking at the statistics of who voted for whom. Iowa Men love Kerry, while women tended towards Edwards. Dean had a lot of the younger voters, of both genders. Unfortunately for Dean, this powerbase may cost him the race: young people in America are apathetic in the extreme. Dean mobilised a pretty impressive number of people in Iowa (as Caucusses go - taking 2+ hours to vote in public is ridiculous, and might put anyone who has a job off voting!), but it wasn't enough. Lets hope that New Hampshire goes better.
Mood: worried
Music: Construction workers

Iowa Caucusses

Today is the Iowa Caucusses, the first stage in deciding the Democratic candidate for the next Presidential election. My favourite candidate is Howard Dean, whom Zogby polling shows to be in second place (but is apparently doing well in early exit polling). My hope is that (a) a lot of people will vote (this country really needs a population who are ready to get off of their apathetic behinds!), and (b) Dean will get the candidacy. If (b) fails, I hope that his grass-roots movement finally makes it clear to young Americans what us PoliSci geeks have known all along: the only way to exact change is to get out, vote, and make your dissaffection known publically.

Time to do some work.
Mood: relaxed
Music: None

Mister Frodo, It Would Seem You Have Been Living Two Lives

Congratulations! You're Elrond!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Mood: sick
Music: Steve!