August 2005 Archives

I was just listening to the GCN, being hosted today by Erskine. He pointed out a very scary development from the American Legion's convention this week in Hawaii. The news release on their web site is entitled Legionnaires Condemn War Protests, Pledge

?For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories,? Cadmus said. ?We must never let that happen again. I assure you, The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom loving peoples.?

Did I miss something? Aren't the troops in Iraq purportedly bringing the same freedoms to the Iraqi people that we, as Americans, have, included the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly? The major concern I have over such statements is that they are missing a very, very big point. Most, if not all, anti-war protests are in support of the people who are giving their lives in the military and are against the Bush administration getting us into a war using lies and further cutting the benefits of those very people who are losing life and limb in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, our government is exporting freedom while denying its own citizens of their personal freedoms. Go figure...

I guess it is safe to turn the computer back on :-) Seems like the worm scare was mostly aimed at media outlets. It has been a busy day for the local fire/rescue services. Our day started around 2:30 AM this morning with a one-car accident on the US 30 Bypass. It was a real nasty one (the flip and roll variety) that included two medical helicopter landings at the scene. The first landing was expected with the LZ (landing zone) set up west of the scene. Both 'copters showed up about the same time and the second one decided that there was enough room just ahead of our traffic unit which sent Alex and me scurrying down the roadway to avoid the rotor wash. I am still amazed by the skill of these pilots to put down in not the best of conditions. I finally got home around 4AM. Later in the morning, while I was at WCU, I heard a serious accident call just north of the borough, followed by a call for our rescue truck to an airplane crash near Brandywine Airport, just down the road from the accident. Figuring that the company sent to both cases (Goshen Fire Companies) would probably need our assistance, I headed towards the station. By the time I was halfway there, we got paged to assist. I met the traffic unit on its way to the call. I got back to school around 1 - sad to say, the two people in the small plane were killed instantly, the firey crash happening just behind the airport. Fire Company meeting tonight - let's hope it isn't like the meeting night two months ago - we had five accident calls in 7 hours that evening.

CNN, in its coverage of what appears to be a world-wide Internet worm attack, actually came out and said maybe that everyone should just turn off their computers for a while and let them rest... Hello? How about using anti-virus software? How about keeping your software revisions up to date? CNN has interrupted their programming world-wide (CNN, Headline News, and CNNi) to cover this breaking story.

It would be nice to take and put about 20° of this hot day and put it into storage for one of those cold days in January or February. Right now, it is 93° with a heat index of 101°! Looks like there is not much relief in sight for the next several days either - we have the usual forecast of possible (but not probable) thunderstorms. For now, the only relief comes expensive: air conditioning.

This is the fifth or sixth time in the last several days that my little weather popup from the Forecastfox that has said that it is raining here. And it is the fifth or sixth time that they have been dead wrong. In fact, it is not raining anywhere within 150 miles of here at the moment. So, I guess that if Rick Santorum gets his way, we'll get crappy weather reporting all the time. Oh, I did check the real weather service and they agree with my astute observation that yes, it is not raining here. Rick, keep your mitts off the National Weather Service. I can get accurate information for free, rather than pay inAccuWeather for incorrect info.

Since the resurrection of my laptop, I have been trying to work outside the house more. It is especially nice in the evenings, to sit on the patio, light up the tacky tiki torches, and liberate the cat for a while. Also, it saves on running the air conditioning. Except on a night like tonight. It is still 80°F but, with the high humidity, it feels like 84°F. Tonight, there is absolutely no breeze, no wind movement at all. So, besides my tethered laptop (need to replace the battery), I dragged the fan out on the veranda as well. Instead of muggy Pennsylvania, it feels more like a tropical island with a nice breeze. Back to work on our internship web site - I designed a MySQL database to store all of our data and I am now building the UI so that we can start adding all of our lab and field notes, as well all of the outcrop photos, photomicrographs from the petrographic microscope, and images and graphs from the scanning electron microscope.

And so is frequently and a lot! Now, get your mind out of the gutter. What I am talking about here are passwords and passphrases. I have been doing some general reading about encryption, in particular about the 128-bit WEP security mode for wireless networking. Now that several of my neighbors have wireless running in their houses, I want to make sure that they don't slip into our network and sap our bandwidth. I already have WEP enabled, but after reading several messages on a board and looking at some cracking code, I must make the comment that longer passphrases do make it more difficult, as well as frequently changing it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Since we are now past the half-way point in 2005, it is time to start gearing up for the senatorial races in '06. I don't know how I happened on this article, but it is a good one regarding the incumbent idiot junior senator from PA. The Inclusive Santorum points out some very scary facts about Santorum and his disgust with gay marriage and how he is really out to remove all civil liberties that he and his neo-con bretheren do not agree with by making sweeping, unrelated pronouncements. Just another reason to oust the bum in '06.

In response to Sen. Rick Santorum's denial of gays' right to privacy, President Bush called him "inclusive." The president is right if "inclusive" means including bad arguments, ridiculous analogies and a reactionary stance on privacy rights among one's political views.

And, by the way, kudos to our senior senator, Arlen Specter, who, despite being a republican, stood up for American jobs by voting against the party line by voting no of CAFTA!

I have been amazed at the number of hacks that folks have been making with the Google Maps product. So, I took a few minutes tonight and tried my own hand at it. The results are shown below, the location of our fire house. This is only a screen capture - the working web page is coming soon! I have an idea for how to use this nifty new API...

Well, the cold front came through late last night and we have received some much needed relief from the oppressive heat of the past several weeks. In fact, it is just 78 degrees right now and I can actually feel a breeze here by the pool. I got up early today and spent a few hours vacuuming the pool. I was just about to take a dip when I was interrupted by the call tones for an accident on Lancaster Pike. By the time I got to the station, the station had been recalled. So, for the rest of the day, I think I will continue working on the pool, do some web work, and enjoy the respit from the summer heat. Tomorrow, I am off to the Dyer Quarry in Birdsboro, PA to do some field work on the igneous rock there. Update: no field trip - got to get the pool filter working :-(

I ran across a new search portal tonight called TurboScout. My first opinion is freaking fantastic. In the words of its developer...

TurboScout is a search tool that saves you time and makes your Web searches easy. With TurboScout you only enter keywords once, then getting and comparing original results from over 90 search engines across 7 categories is as simple as clicking the engine?s name. No more retyping keywords into different search engines.

It even looks in places I have never heard of! Another nice feature is that the developer has included a hook for the Firefox search box which is probably the Firefox feature that I use the most. Give it a shot while it is still there. Why do I say that? It is being developed by a college student in Singapore and, unless he gets some capital backing, I am sure it will disappear. Let's just hope whomever feeds the money does not do it to take it off the air or charge for its use.

While there is nothing funny about the outsourcing of American IT jobs (been there, been screwed), this little Flash ditty sums up the end result to American consumers as a result of shipping technical support jobs to third-world countries like India. Saves money for the companies and screws the American consumer. Be forewarned - some the language is rated "R" - as in Robert Novak ;-)) (via Networking-Realm)