tbradshaw.net

Tonight I was running some errands and I was presented with the first real opportunity to try out the four wheel drive capability of my Jeep. It started snowing pretty heavily tonight while I was running errands with Mo, and on the way back to UC to drop her off I definitely started sliding around quite a bit, despite the relatively good traction of the Jeep in 2WD.

So, I just pulled’er over to the side of the road, pulled the 4WD lever into Part Time 4WD, put it in reverse for a couple car lengths and then was on my way. Holy crap did it make a difference! It was like a driving a completely different vehicle. It kind of reminds me of playing a high customizable race car game like Gran Turismo 3 where you race with a car for a long time and get used to how it feels, then you trick it out and upgrade the vehicle to the max and suddenly it’s like you have a 1000% better vehicle.

That’s what it was like going from 2WD to 4WD in the snow. Slippage just disappeared, handling was superb, and even braking was superior. Of course I’m certain that one must still be very careful when driving in adverse conditions, regardless of the drive tran configuration of a vehicle, but there is no doubt in my mind the different 4WD can make in poor weather conditions. I feel a lot safer on the road in poor weather, especially in comparison to the coffin in skiis that my Camaro was.

Undeniably "Big Ass"

So, I’ve actually been saving this blog post for a while now so it’s a little stale, but still pretty good. For a little while I’ve been trying to beat a map of what I like to call “Big Ass” Minesweeper. This is where I’ve configured a custom game in minesweeper to be as big as I can fit on one of my monitors. A little while back, I succeeded at beating this enormous minesweeper game and was pretty happy about it.

It’s a minor victory, no doubt, but I was still happy about it. I would have blogged it immediately, but this isn’t exactly the kind of story that brings any “ooo’s” or “aaah’s”. That is unless a person has a good screenshot. And so this post has been waiting until the gallery server got running well. So feel free to take a look at my massively cool minesweeper victory.

Since there aren’t a lot of things to do in Manhattan on a holiday weekend Saturday, Llama thought of a great idea. Let’s experiment with the llamanade recipe! I couldn’t agree more. So tonight we’re having some friends over for some experimental llamanade and drinking games.

To add a little extra excitement to the mix, Brandon and I just got back from Hastings where he picked up a couple cool looking commercially boxed drinking games for our enjoyment tonight. Some neat game called “What the F*ck?” where it appears that the crowd guesses what a particular patron would answer to some crazy ass question, and there are selected booze penalties for getting it “wrong”. Then Brandon picked up some other boxed game that claims to be like thirty something drinking games in a box. The odds are pretty good that at least something in that box has got to be a really good time.

With all of that drinking game excitement, it would be easy to forget the experimental side project. The premise is simple. Llamanade is fantastic, everyone loves it… but it’s not exactly a strong drink and often takes googas of cups of llamanade to have a lasting effect. Our mission tonight? Tweak the recipe so that llamanade loses none of the fantastic taste that has made it a winner night afte night, but picks up a fun loving kick in the butt in the form of potency.

It should be fun!

Well, it didn’t take long to realize that “tom”–the server running the new gallery software–just wasn’t fast enough to cut it. I’ve replaced “tom” with “huckleberry”, that should be much more responsive.

It’ll probably take until the end of the day or so before DNS full propegates, and I’ll leave tom up until then.

Yeah that’s right, Turkey reprezunt!

As per my usual, I’m working through the Thanksgiving holiday. Both at work and here around The Bunker. I’ve been cleaning on my bathroom and crankin’ out clean laundry by the ton, and on the work front I’ll be making a massive workstation replacement and data distribution and organization change.

This is fairly similar to my experiences last year with Thanksgiving, with one notable exception. I actually thought ahead for Thanksgiving dinner this time. Last year, I just casually left the house around dinner time thinking I would go pick up a nice chicken sandwich or something from Wendy’s. But alas, they were closed for Thanksgiving. Some further exploration found that every single place in freaking Manhattan, KS was closed, with the exception of Pizza Hut on the west side and Rusty’s. Since I didn’t feel like a Rusty burger, I opted for a chicken pizza from Pizza Hut. Not exactly the environment that makes for a fun dining experience by oneself, but it was still pretty good.

However, as you can see from the image attached to this blog, this year is different! As I was walking into Wal-Mart last night to pick up a big ass scrub brush for my shower, it hit me. Hey! I could get something turkey now, and eat it tomorrow! So there is it, two packages of Carl Budding turkey lunchmeat. (Only the finest for such a fine holiday.) Also, just by chance, I have a couple boxes of stuffing! Yeah baby! So tonight I’m looking forward to a couple fine fine turkey sandwiches (I might even toast the bread!) and stuffing to match. I’ll probably have to come home from work to cook/eat it, but no worries. I can work all night.

While most of the students here at Kansas State have headed “home” for the Thanksgiving holiday, I found myself so far behind that I couldn’t justify the trip. One of the things that I’ve been incredibly behind on has been cleaning. Both my bedroom and my bathroom have needed to be cleaned for weeks, and my bathroom hasn’t gotten a full top to bottom scrub since I moved in. (And that’s assuming that it got a good scrub from the girl that had the bathroom before she moved out.)

Well tonight has been a night of laundry and bathroom scrubbing, and I have to say that I’m quite disappointed. I’ve been scrubbing for over three hours on this shower, and finally came to the conclusion that I’ve been dreading.

Some of this stuff just isn’t going to come clean. The grout between the tiles has quite a bit of dirty looking discoloration. About five cleaning products, three scrub brushes, two sponges, and an hour of elbow grease later, I finally get one of those very difficult spots to ‘come clean’. Only, by ‘come clean’ I mean that the grout just broke off and came off in that spot. (Luckly there was another layer of grout stuff behind it. Yeah, so those little spots aren’t just dirt, they are actually rotten grout spots. Hmph.

So next I go to tackle the gross shower floor. I’ve purchased a monster brush for this one. This baby has a broom handle with 360 degree rotation of the tapered brush head (for those hard to reach places). It did great work on almost all of the floor, with the exception of the “bad corner”. This “bad corner” is so dubbed because it holds water. For whatever reason the shower isn’t level and water just sits in the two corners nearest the shower head. As you can imagine, this is quite the incubator for mold.

Well despite the scrubbing having an amazing effect on the mold and grime, I couldn’t seem to lift a rusty looking crud from the corner. I even pulled out the big guns and went for the Lime Away. Nothing. Careful inspection after a long bout of scrubbing revealed that this was definitely not going to lift. It seems that not only is the shower a little uneven, but someone actually left the thing moldy long enough for the mold (or corrosion, or whatever) to eat through a good portion of the fiberglass, leaving these rust colored low spots. Definitely not coming clean.

Finally, the icing on the cake. I bought this impressive looking scrubbing stone, “Pure Clean Bathroom Block”, that advertises itself as a smart cleaning block that really does a number with anything that can handle harsh abrasion. And did I have the perfect place for it. I have two soap dishes in my shower, previously metallic, currently solid green. This block did an amazing job taking like 4mm of green/yellow/white crud off of these metal soap trays, right down to the shiny metal. Well, as shiny as this metal could be. It seems that the corrosion has already turned these soap dishes into veritable swiss cheese of a previously proud metal. So instead of two gross green soap dishes of solid lime, I now have two shady looking brown and silver metal soap dishes. Better I guess, but still not really clean.

Anyway, I’m not really that pleased. I was hoping to end up with a bathroom that would be so clean I could be proud of it… but it doesn’t appear to be in the cards. I guess I’ll just flip on the “good enough” switch, instead of my more typical “it’s gotta be perfect” switch. Shame.

While I’ve been working on the gallery and preparing the first round of albums for The Bunker, I’ve also taken a lot of time and sorted my own personal image albums. Just like The Bunker albums, most (if not all) images that are questionable have been hidden, but I’ve added a ton of other images.

Previously on the fragbait picture gallery (still available at http://fragbait.tbradshaw.net/gallery for those feeling nostalgic), all of my friends had their own personal albums which often contained tons of albums that were duplicate-ish. (That is, from the same event and stuff, but not the same pictures.) I’ve combined these albums into my own photo album, just taking a moment to “mark” albums that I’ve lifted with the name of the original photo-taker/captioner.

I also have quite a few images that I’ve taken on trips and stuff during the time that the gallery server was down, so I hope to be adding those images as well. I’ve definitely got some from a museum in New York from this year’s spring break that I think are really cool.

I’ve been having a great time with the new “random image” block that’s in the lower left of the new gallery server. I just hope it’s smart enough not to show any random hidden images to the wrong person!

After much delay, the Gallery server is back up, hosting a pretty huge number of photo albums. While it may be a little flaky for a while as I try and get all of the bugs worked out, I did take the time to upload, title, and caption a good number of our Bunker Project images.

So if you’ve been wondering where those pictures of the bar construction and hot tub/deck renovations have been, they do actually exist and are available online.

Just like always, the vast majority of the albums and photos from parties are still hidden and require visitors to log in and provide a password before they can be viewed. (Candid drunken photos aren’t exactly public friendly.) If you want to get a log on for our Gallery server, then you’ll just need to visit the site and click on the “Register” link in the upper left hand corner. I’ll then approve your account and grant you the necessary priviledges to whatever is appropriate.

Tonight at the Bunker we’re going to be having a night of Triple ‘D’, ‘R’ as a little weekend festivities. For those wondering what that means, we’re talking about DDDR, or Drunken Dance Dance Revolution. Oh yeah, it’s going to be great.

We’ll probably be starting up a little after 10pm and bring a fiver for keg beer. Until then, it’s nap time.

Today’s football festivities began bright and early at 6:00am when Dave and I started getting ready for the Big Cats morning tailgating activities. It was a decent morning, a little cold and windy, and a little sparsely populated–no doubt due to our football performance this year.

However, as I’ve come to enjoy hanging out with the Big Cats on gameday mornings, I was really enjoying the company of Gwen, Beth, Tyler, Ben, Mark, Dave, and Eli, along with Mary who came to walk/visit from Iowa. The morning was pretty “loose” and started with some broken-bat-on-stilts baseball in the indoor playing field where I played catcher and outfield for a Tyler and Ben as they batted and pitched (respectively). We headed over to a fantastic breakfast at Kendall’s parents tailgate where I scarfed up three bowls of biscuits and gravy followed by a big cinnimon roll. I then was ground crew for Gwen, Beth, and Mark.

On Gwen’s suggestion, we decided to head down to the student tailgating area instead of staying exclusively to the paved tailgating lots. It was definitely a change of pace, and it was cool to check out the student tailgating experience and hang out with Gwen and Beth.

As an aside, I can’t help but take a moment to mention how much I’ve appreciated the Big Cat experience that I’ve shared with the group over this football season. Although I’m not a Big Cat, just helping out with such a great group of people in such a cool program is a fantastic experience that I wouldn’t want to do without. I hope that even without football games, I’ll still get to see that group regularly.

After “getting down”, I was kind of debating not going to the game. I was very tired from the Friday night before and the early start. I was probably still debating the idea of going to the game as I went with Dave and Mary to a tailgate in the student lot for a beer. Then a day changing event took place. Mary had an iCat ticket, but didn’t need it to sit in GA where she planned on sitting. So we switched.

For a final game of the season, I can’t think of a better way to spend it than where Dave and I ended up. Down on the forth row, on the 45 yard line, surrounded by great friends. Llama, JD, Kari, Forrest, Dave, Brandon, and Kippy were right down there with me, which is just about as far as a voice could reach anyway. Forrest is probably the biggest and best fan ever, and so the mix was fantastic. I couldn’t have been happier about how my time at the game was. I’m sad that it’s over, to be honest… but I will definitely be buying my iCat tickets in advance for next season.

Now the game itself? Well that’s a little different. You can catch a sports show or reruns on Fox Sports Net if you want to see the game (You’ll see me there in the footage.) But the end of the game was just painful, for several reasons. It was an embarrassing loss (especially since being so close to the other team meant that there was some amazing trash talking getting shoved right back into the fans mouth by the Iowa State bench). Also, it signified the last game with Darren Sproiles, which in turn signified that another semester/year has gone by. It was a very bittersweet ending.

I’m so happy that I decided to go to this last game though, and I’m amazingly appreciative of Mary giving me her iCat ticket. Even though the game was a loss, the last game was great for me. The only way that it could have been better would have been if the rest of the Big Cats would have been there, and maybe a Big Cat more in that iCat section with me.

This morning started off to be one of those days where I was going to actually follow my schedule and get the things done I had planned. But instead I’ve spent the morning on the phone with Capital One to discuss a faux pas on their part.

Not long ago I called in my Capital One visa card as lost. The new one had came in the mail, I had forgotten to put it in my wallet to supplant the old one, and hopes of finding it were nil. So I call them up to report it lost. That call or the next (I had a tech support question for their web site soon afterwards), I explicitly asked the customer service representeative if it was acceptable to use the Capital One Select Checks that I had received in absence of my card that was just reported lost. I was very explicit, because I had determined that the account number had completely changed.

I was assured that any checks I wrote would be automatically forwarded to the new account. For days now I’ve been hawkishly watching my Capital One statement online, waiting for the checks to hit. Today the inevitable occured. I received the first “returned check statement” to let me know that the check I wrote to Walter’s True Value was not honored, and that I owed CheckPro the balance plus $32.00 in fees.

“Oh bullshit!” was my immediate reaction, and I started on the phone with Capital One. At first, the problem set was easy to define and made the customer service representatives quite nervous… and I knew why. It was very clear what needed to happen, Capital One needs to cover these bounced checks and pay me for the service charges as well. However, it was clear that the tools at the disposal of the service representatives didn’t seem to be a perfect fit. (I can empathize, everyone can only do so much.)

I bounced around a few reps, but eventually a manager talked with someone else and came to a fair resolution. They will issue new checks directly to the necessary parties, then I will fax them the return check statements, and they will reimburse me for any service fees.

This isn’t exactly ideal, since I’m going to have to do the paperwork mambo for several weeks, have a couple hundred dollars in credit put into “limbo” while the bureaucratic wheels at Capital One process things, and I’m not sure if writing these “bad” checks will effect my credit rating. However, all things considered, I’m happy with the service that they have offered me as long as everything happens just as they have described.

Though, there is a huge catch. While issuing new checks on my behalf is something that Capital One can do, I don’t know if receiving checks is going to be acceptable to all agencies that will be handling these bounced checks. CheckPro, a local establishment, were willing to accept a check from Capital One… but it did require a personal phone call to the establishment to let them know what was happening. There were four checks total that are going to bounce, the one to Walter’s True Value is the first to hit. But soon there will be bounced checks from Home Depot and Sherwin Williams as well. If they demand cash or money order as CheckPro did, I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk them into taking a check instead.

I’m some what optimistic.

Anyway, just one more straw onto the camel’s back.

Like my good friend (and boss) Sterling I couldn’t help but reply to the interesting post on Dr. Hsu’s blog.

Although I can’t help but mention that I’m completing this thing (meme, I think is what Dr. Hsu calls it… which I think is a reference to the idea of a “social gene”) after a Thursday night at Rusty’s… so beware of typos.

International Issues

Foreign Policy

I believe our entire perception of foreign policy can be greatly simplified by having our federal government step back more from the entire foreign policy arena and allow the individuals of the United States to act of their own accord.

Foreign aid is a horrible waste. Not only does it waste money from our stand point (we “spend” money and get nothing in return), but without fail the money ends and/or food ends up supporting the problems in other countries rather than helping to solve the problems in other countries. We gotta quit it and instead allow foreign investment and private charities take over. Then at least the investment dollars will go to effective local entrepreneurs that can produce wealth and charity work will actually get done instead of just propping up corrupt or ineffective regimes.

Homeland Security

Oh man, this kills me. On my radio show, Freedom to Choose, we’ve talked about all kinds of amazing failures of the Department of Homeland security already… like when they sent FBI agents to remove fake rubics cubes from toy store shelves for copyright violation (oh yeah, that’s a danger to National Security).

Homeland Security is just an excuse to extend the bloated bureaucracy and extinguish more of our freedoms. Most importantly, it’s clear that a disconnected, flexible force of dedicated individuals is exactly what’s effective in the modern “warfare” of terrorism and counter-terrorism. So why in the hell do we think that some giant lumbering bureaucracy of committees and elected officials and focus groups is going to be the light saber to take out the “dark side”. “Homeland Security” is like using water to put out an oil fire. We’re just going to spread the problem around without really putting it out.

Of course, we’ll either spray water in one place and call that one place a victory (even though the fire only moved), or we’ll claim failure and ask for more tax money and more lost freedom to make things more effective.

Gag… choke… barf.

War & Peace

War is an absolute last resort, only in the case of explicit self defense. Recent acts like the Iraqi war are discusting, and thrusting US troops into conflicts that are not self defense of America or Americans are almost as disturbing.

Peace is exactly what we want. I think that this can be best served by expanding our trading partners in any way possible. Countries that do business together never war against each other.

Free Trade

Definitely, in every way, and yes… even unilaterally. First, any other limitations are a nasty form of protectionism. Even in cases where countries may take the “advantage” by producing goods to sell in the US and making competative products from the US expensive in they’re own countries… that’s only a temporary situation. Soon, domestic producers will out perform international competition. If they don’t, then we can all take advantage of the superior good for lower cost and divert our efforts elseware.

Second, what the hell does Washington have anything to do with my personal decisions to deal with people of other countries. No where did Amercians ask for a commercial babysitter from the federal government. Whatever our citizens want to buy or sell with other countries at any cost or set of terms is between the individuals on both sides of the borders.

Immigration

Open borders, complete and both directions. Illegal immigrants are subject to horrible working conditions and other exploitation exactly because they have no legal protection. Illegal immigrants also work for such pathetic wages precisely for the same reason. Put everyone on the same playing field in the market of labor, it’s up to every proprietor exactly who they want to hire and at what terms… and it’s up to each employee exactly what they want to work for.

Energy & Oil

Yeah, energy and oil is a very embarrassing playground of the rich and powerful playing poker and toying with the resources of the nation. No surprise that energy and oil are two of the most regulated industries in the nation.

Drop the regulations, drop the protections. “Foreign dependancy” on oil wouldn’t even be a problem if the government would quick freaking propping prices and trying to hold them steady. If the Middle East decides to crank up prices, then sure, let the price of oil and gas skyrocket. Sure we’ll slow for a little while, but those high prices of oil and gas mean that alternatives become a much better investment. I’d like to see us move out of this petroleum product “phase” faster anyway… let the market run it’s course and we’ll be there as soon as it’s a good idea.

Domestic Issues

Gun Control

Gun control seems like a great idea at first, but all of them are just really counter productive. Those that want to do bad things with guns aren’t going to follow all of the gun control laws, only to commit a heinous crime. When guns are illegal, then only the illegal will have guns. Then all the peaceful citizens are at a horrible disadvantage.

Just drop all of the counterproductive gun laws. As the quote goes, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Crime

The only real solution to crime is to remove the incentive to commit crimes. Most crimes in the US are victimless crimes and just need to be made legal. (The most immediate and huge case would be drugs… puhlease… legalize everything.)

Also, things like mandatory minimums are a discusting practice, for any crime (not just drugs). Legislative decisions should never encroach on judicial processes. Bad laws need to be ignored, null sentences are a great way to do it.

Drugs

All legal. All of it.

A person owns themselves. What they choose to do with their own body is up to them and no one else. If crimes are committed under the influence, then of course they are 100% responsible for their actions, regardless.

Civil Rights

Critical, fading, under attack.

Patriot Act, DMCA, etc, etc. It’s like a series of joke mockeries of limited government… only it’s real… and not funny.

Jobs

It seems that every issue here has been an issue of government… but this is a notable exception. Jobs have nothing to do with government. And there is a simple reason why… the government can never “create” jobs. The government doesn’t actually produce anything. They can only move jobs opportunities from potential employers that pay taxes to the public sector or other employers that recieve subsidy.

While the economy is not a zero sum game, production creates wealth where wealth wasn’t previously there… government action is a zero sum game. Every expenditure of the government that “leads” to jobs came from taxation that removed jobs.

Importantly, even when the government does the right thing and gets out of the way of entrepreneurs, the market creates the job, the government just inhibited less. Inhibiting less doesn’t count as “creating” jobs, just like robbing from some people to give money to others doesn’t count as “creating jobs”.

Environment

The environment is an incredibly important issue, yet environmentalists seem to “overlook” that nearly all land destruction happens on “public” lands or waters or with “permits”. The largest poluter in the US is the US Army… they polute more than like the top 15% of the mega-corps all combined. AND the US Army just tells the EPA to go screw themselves.

Environmental regulation is amazingly counterproductive. Let organizations like the 4H and Ducks Unlimited buy up the land and do something great with it.

Economic Issues

Budget & Economy

Wow, what a big topic to get one little title. The budget needs to be balance… actually… in surplus to take care of the debt. And while I’m a huge fan of tax cuts… you actually have to cut spending too. Even better, cut spending more than taxes, pay of the debt, and then when it’s gone, cut taxes some more.

Government Reform

Yeah… lots of it. The two party system is broken and corrupt, government encroaches into almost every portion of our lives unnecessarily. Smaller government, more varied viewpoints represented. Or even better, if we make government small enough, it really won’t matter too much what it does. That would be a glorious way to live.

Tax Reform

Yes, yes, yes!

As close to non-existant as possible. Our current tax system is an abomination of wasted time, money, and effort, a social engineering experiment gone bad.

Social Security

No. From the very beginning this was just an attempt at political legacy… just read FDR’s memiors. He talks about how this false insurance isn’t really an insurance, but when you give people an “entitlement” no future politician will ever be able to remove his legacy.

Welfare & Poverty

As Milton Friedman said (horribly paraphrased), “When you subsidize something, you get more of exactly that.

Welfare is a subsidization of poverty, and we’ve gotten exactly that… more poverty. The problem with allowing politicians to try and “help” the poor, is that they get to “help” the poor, and gain votes. But then they want more votes… and so they need more poor. It’s a sick cycle, and just like more government programs, they are more counter productive then they are productive. Our nation and the people in this nation are worse off because of our welfare state, not better.

I saw some comments on Dr. Hsu’s blog about how we should “catch up” with the rest of the World’s level of social care. Oh please! That’s like saying we should get caught up with the rest of the World Wrestling Federations level of intellegent discourse.

Technology & Infrastructure

I love technology and infrastructure. Just leave “us” in charge, the demand from consumers will tell the market what to build.

Social Issues

Education: Incentives for Public, Private, Both, or Neither?

Neither. We need to get the government out of the indoctrination business and get children back in the business of learning. I strongly support the seperation of school and state.

Health Care: Nationalized or Privatized?

Nationalized health care? Are you kidding? Do we all want to die? No, completely privatized. But not like Republican privatized where you just sculpt the laws to be the most beneficial for businesses as possible without removing any governmnet protection of any kind.

I mean real privatization, where the umbilicial cord of government subsidy, regulation, and guaranteed sale is severed and businesses are left completely at the whim of the consumer… a consumer that might actually give a shit about the health care they receive instead of just thinking that “insurance” is the answer to all questions.

Abortion

There are two possibilities. One, a human is killed. Two, a body part of a woman is amputated.

Somewhere during the term of pregancy, that little flesh ball turns into a human. Before that time, the woman can do whatever she wants. After that time, then the only justification is to save the life of the mother (ala, self defense).

Now when is that line? When does “growth” turn to “child”? I don’t know. And I intend to not allow myself to be put into a position where I’ll need to strongly consider that “bright line”. I think in time science will find a way to tell what’s going on.

If I had to make a policy decision, I’d say screw all of this “abortion law” business and instead make a law that said, “life starts at “. Make a best guess that seems tolerable from a science and not faith standpoint. Sunset the law so that every x many years it’s reconsidered. Then tell the abortion protesters and pro-choicers that they should stop holding signs and start funding research. Prove that the line needs moved, and then the law is changed.

Of course, I’m probably making that too simple, but that’s my best guess.

Families & Children

Very important. I think that families and children are one of those things in a human life that really make life happy. Besides that… who needs a “policy”.

Corporations

Corporations as they exist now are an abomination to the idea of a just society. They aren’t even really groups of people, they are more like extensions of the government. Completely limited liability? Citizen under law but untriable for murder? Forget that. Corporate law in the US (and nearly all of the developed world) is an embarassement and/or a crime.

Principles & Values

Also important. Guiding principles are what make day to day life possible and consistant.

Interesting Topics

Affirmative Action

Horribly counterproductive. It’s like giving bigots an excuse to hate.

Death Penalty

No. Maybe in a just judicial system I would consider it, but I haven’t seen one of those… so no. I would consider it only for war crimes, where keeping the prisoner alive might cause another war.

Drug War

Crap. Total Crap. Stop it. Now.

Flat Tax

Eh, better I guess.

GLBTPπ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual, Pansexual, and Piesexual) Rights

Right are rights, sexuality doesn’t make anyone any less human. Every right given to one person should be extended to all. Marriage, whatever, people are people.

Illegal Immigrants

Shouldn’t be illegal.

The Middle East and U.S. Relations with Islamic Countries

I think we could do a lot better by getting out of their way. I oppose some parts of Islamic theocracies (things like state controlled media bother me), but we instigate most of the problems we get. It’s a complex situation, our relation with islamic countries, and I think we could do a lot better by doing a lot less.

Right to Die

If a person has to right to determine how they shall die, how can anyone really own themselves? It’s no one’s business but the subject person how they choose to die.

Wow! That was huge! It’s been like an hour or more since I started writing. (It’s probably obvious, since the answers got shorter and shorter.) Anyway, there’s my “platform”.

This has been a little while in the works, but this morning I really started to take note on just how much my job is starting to change. While for over a year now I’ve been quite content and often challenged in my position as High Wizard of the Dark Arts, constantly pressing as much as I can for doing things the Right Way. And I think that I’ve made a lot of progress towards making our department systems a better place to work. Of course, it’s got all of the tarnish of a “work in progress” rather than a stable system that works, but… eh… there’s only 30 hours in a week.

However, lately my tasks have been shifting considerably… though mainly through initiative of my own. I’ve had very mixed results with the curriculum here in the department, but I’m still passionate about how much I love K-State. This has let me to participate on any/all forums, presentations, and panels that I can get my calender around when it comes to the evolution and improvement of our curriculum here in the CIS department. I’ve also been asked by Dr. Dan Andresen to head up a department LAN party (looking to be around the end of dead week) in a continued effort to spur some kind of community around the CS department here at KSU. I’ve been asked to help teach a cis690 games programming course that should be quite cool if it all works out, both for community building and for a good time. In addition, I initially volunteered to participate in a web development oversight committee to help insure that our next incarnation of a department website doesn’t… well… suck.

Each of these additional responsibilities outside of my normal work responsibilities has pretty much complete department support and is quite different than the usual “make the impossible (asp.net) possible”. I also recently participated in a joint CIS/Theater department venture with Because He Can where I provided a couple nights of commentary after the show about identity theft and other e-crimes. I found the experience very very rewarding. Then, a little bit of icing on the cake was a suggestion that maybe we expand our staff here in the CIS support staff to allow for this “freelance” work I’ve been taking on to not hurt our department support levels (among other reasons).

At first I was a little nervous, mainly because of the lack of any “concreteness” to any of the new projects that I’ve been sort of kind of taking on. I do really like my job as the lead windows guy here on the systems team, and I was initially quite nervous with the idea of spreading out to other types of tasks and supplanting some of my work here on the systems team. I mean… if this community building stuff doesn’t work out, I still want my nice job here as a systems guy.

However, I do think that I have a lot to offer to the department when it comes to community building tasks. My work with QuakeCon is a shining example of how my leadership skills have developed over time, and I really enjoy employing them when the opportunity arises. The possibility of having another co-worker to share in the systems work so that I can spend more time developing on the department website is starting to sound better the more that I think about it. I’ve also committed to helping with the department LAN party, and I’ve even been throwing around the idea of trying to get a CIS pub crawl going… I mean… why not?

Anyway, there’s no doubt that my role here at the department is shifting… and I hope it’s for the better, I’m still a little nervous.

This has been a pretty long term probably with our linux labs, it bothers me quite a bit, so I figured I would try and make a little “public service announcement” for those that read the CIS tech blogs section.

There is a really poor interaction between the Solaris NFS server and the Linux NFS client. Why exactly this problem exists is beyond my expertise, but in our giant mesh of file system mounts on the unix side of things our linux lab computer have to mount from castor.cis.ksu.edu a Solaris box. This causes a crash of at least one critical daemon on the client computer and then causes Gnome to just crap a brick on the spot as it tries to establish some file locks.

The perfect solution would be to just stop mounting things from castor, but unfortunately we’re tied to that server for now until we can get something done about the mail situation. Right now mail is still delivered for the majority of the CIS users (but not all, some of us have escaped) into an ol’ school spool file on castor which needs to be mounted by everyone. There’s also some administrative stuff on there that could be moved, but I don’t know that there’s really a reason to move it until we can move the mail stuff.

Sterling and Cole have a stop-gap solution planned for mail to take place over the Christmas break which should take care of the problem. Unfortunately, that means that the linux labs are probably going to continue to suck until next semester.

This really rubs me the wrong way because it’s really making my Windows labs look like the superior environment for CS. Well they aren’t! I really think that our users need to step out of their blue and green curvy comfort zone and use the linux labs (or linux in general) to see how the other side lives… but, of course, it’s really hard to recommend when our linux labs are sucking it up.

So anyway, no solution as of now. I’ve seen Cole recommending that logging into the linux boxes with “Gnome Failsafe Mode” will work, so give that a shot.

Lately a number of our computers in the CIS computer labs have been flaking out, giving errors along the lines of “Could not find your profile.” This error would then be followed by, well nothing, because the user would not be allowed to move in.

A little background, the current implementation of Windows profile management for the CIS department is a little sloppy, but necessitated by a previous failure of roaming profiles. A default profile is created on each workstation and new profiles are created for any student that logs onto a workstation as-needed. The profile is entirely local, and then is scheduled for deletion at the end of day.

I’m not particularly fond of the way that this works, but it’s a pretty darn good way to make sure that profiles stay temporary in a system where roaming profiles wouldn’t work. Thanks to improvements in roaming profiles with later versions of Windows, I think we’re going to be reintroducing roaming profiles to make this particular type of problem obsolete. (Of course, every change really just changes one set of problems for another, but there are some other advantages to roaming profiles as well.)

So, back to the actual problem. Every time that a “new” user logs on to a workstation (we’re going to define “new” as a user that has not logged on to a particular workstation since that particular workstation ran the script to delete all profiles) a sixty something meg profile is then copied from c:\documents and settings\default user to c:\documents and settings\%USERNAME% and then the log on process continues.

Well it seems like in the vast majority of the computers in n16 and a couple in n126 and n22 have not not been running the driveClean script as they should, and quite simply, they filled up. This means that there isn’t enough room for the user profile to be created on the drive, so when the logon process continues, the user profile isn’t there and it errors out with the familiar error message we mentioned before.

As an immediate stop-gap solution, Tyson and I went through all of the n16 computers, ran driveClean, and re-created the scheduled task on each of the computers–by hand, using the wizard–in hopes that would cover it.

I’ll be checking the driveClean logs today to see how things have been going. I’m hopeful.

Just yesterday I was blogging about how horrible early mornings were, and it only seems fitting to follow it up today. Copus played another hot show at PJ’s last night, which means that I am, of course, hung over today.

When I set out to write this blog entry, I thought for sure that I would be expounding on how horrible the mornings are with the additional discomfort of being hung over. But as I sit here, thinking about how much I want to sleep, I came to realize… this isn’t any worse. A moderate hang over isn’t really any worse than how I normally feel on any given morning when I have woke up earlier than say, 8:45am.

I think that’s kind of sad.

It’s been a little while since I’ve had the pleasure of an evening with live music, and it looks like tonight has snuck up on me. Copus is playing tonight at PJ’s, and as always it looks to be a kick ass show.

Chase and Nate actually arrived in Manhattan last night and began looking for jobs (!) here in the Manhattan area. It looks like they might be considering a brief stint here in Manhappiness so that Copus can get some more practice time in.

Wow. That’s just crazy.

This also marks the first day that we’ve had the kegerator loaded back up in several weeks. Since I’ve failed my math class, I don’t really have any pressing homework… so I guess let the after party begin.

This isn’t a very good sample morning, because I didn’t really sleep well either, but this morning’s early morning rise joined a long list of physically painful mornings.

Of course I’ve never been a morning person, but usually when I think of a “not morning person” I think of someone irritable or cranky or something else relatively mental. Not me. I wake up early to heartburn, nausea, and headaches; in relatively severe form depending on how early in the morning it is.

I don’t really think that it is an issue of lack of sleep, since I can certainly sleep from like 5am to 10am and feel just fine. But if I sleep from 1am to 7am, getting out of bed is like being yanked directly into hell.

Thankfully my schedule doesn’t demand this kind of early morning very often, but this time I’ve been especially burned. I did the first windows file server based roaming profile roll-out over the weekend, and I had came in very early (yeah, 7:50a is incredibly early to me) to finish up the process and get a user situated. Yeah… she’s not feeling well today and called in absent.

So I get to do it again tomorrow morning… super.

Mo and I went to see The Incredibles tonight and it was fantastic. I haven’t seen a movie that enjoyable for a long time. From start to finish, The Incredibles kept coming through with great visuals, awesome comedic timing, artful composition, and just great laughs over and over again.

We were definitely laughing from start to finish, with of course the occational break for serious portions of the movie. I would highly recommend the film to anyone that is looking for a great film to kill a couple hours on. It was definitely good enough that Mo and I both exclaimed that we wanted to see it again only seconds after walking out the door.

Great show.

I took a little time this morning before lunch and work to type up some goals for Boof, the desktop blogging application I want to write… eventually.

If you’re interested in that kind of thing, you should check out the prose so far and leave some comments.