Fine, okay, it's a blog already!

The genuises over at the GOP have decided the best way to get out the vote is so send out pop-up advertising while you surf the net. The prospect has sure encouraged me to vote against them. How about you? Do you like being irritated by people who want your support? If so, I'd see if your health insurance covers a psych evaluation. I got the story from Slashdot, who also link you to a story on how to check on your neighbor's political contributions. Kinda creepy but I know a few of you are just that bored.

In any case, I refer you again to Jim Rapoza's story about the stupidity of pop-up ads and point you to the Mozilla and Firefox download pages so you can finally get a browser that stops ads from getting to you in the first place.

Our GOP buddies have been probably successful with our less intelligent citizens in painting anyone against their lying reasons to go to war as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous. So, if you are one of those I just offended, please explain why is the widow of a fallen soldier not falling into line in blind obedience and awe to the Big Lie? Because she's right, that's why.

Our pals the French are cozying up to Saddam again. At least one of their more insidious lawyers. Let's be honest though; his call was probably only minutes ahead of Johnny Cochran's.

You want to know why the Israelis still marginally hold the moral high ground in their fight against their own local bomb throwers? This is why.

Watch how fast I stop using Travelocity. Did ya miss it? Want to know why? Read on. Granted, probably all the travel agencies are going to do this, but I'll at least I only know about this situation at the moment.

I'll tip-toe around the obvious news story. My dad once said that you don't talk bad about someone once they've passed on, regardless of the ill they brought to the world. So that's what I'll do.

For those among the living, we have Republican Survivor. Another game is Presidental Knockout. Guess whose butt I chose to slap down. Also, I didn't make this up, so bear with me. In trying to con African-American voters into backing him, Mr. "There is no such thing as a hate crime" Bush has recruited the good graces of...wait for it...Don King.

In non-political bashing, let's take a page from Minnesota - no, not in electing ex-wrestlers - but in combating gas price gouging. We might not be able to fight OPEC or Big Oil, but we can hit the hometown thieves.

Kobe's lawyers, finks that they are, have gotten permission to have the potential rape victim not labelled as a victim. Seriously, have we all lost our minds at this point?

Two technology articles to pass along. One is a Popular Science story about a guy who spent some time this year trying to emulate life in 1954. Kind of a revelation on how much tech we've gotten used to. Another article covers the measure of a death penalty in a tongue-in-cheek way concerning virus writers and other filth. The last covers the modern music industry and how we end up with the crap bands we do when better music never gets heard by larger audiences.

We spent last weekend out of town, specifically hiking, dining and relaxing in Payson, AZ. Got to catch a D-Backs game in there too. It was much fun. This week I'm out of town in Carson City on work assignment. Have a good one.

So, been going through updating the desktop, laptop, Linux box/soon-to-be server, and sorting my various flash drives. Figured I'd pass on some software links and some links that have cropped up.

First off, a wallpaper generator called Desktop Earth courtesy of a link from Tsume. I'm gonna try it out on the work laptop for kicks.

Next, like I mentioned, I was sorting some stuff on my travelling flash drives and decided I really like Firefox enough to have it on the road with me. I knew of the USB version of the app, but also have found they have NVU and OpenOffice app support as well. Consider a small chunk of my 1GB stick taken by stuff from Portable Apps.

I've been reading about this presumed Web 2.0 stuff. A lot of it seems like marketing hooey, and it probably is, but I'll try some stuff out and see if any of it is applicable to the site. I know I have a project for a Google Maps-like interface, and I probably need to be able to upload pictures without the pain of doing it like I have been (thus, no pictures lately). I'll let you know if any of these mad scientist projects bear fruit for me.

And now, to something I hope gets a little comment interest from all of you. I've been watching more than my usual share of TV lately and I've found that I really loathe some of the people on my screen. Actually, it's commercial people mostly.

So, here's my current list of people I'd like to pimp slap, in current order of annoyance:

1. The Taco Bell "good to go" imbecile

2. The Verizon Guy

3. Jared from Subway

4. Debbie from Sprint

5. The Burger King

I know you have others. Pop in a comment and let me know.

The IBM PC turned 25 years old over the weekend. If you didn't know that, don't feel too concerned. It's just geeks like me that follow that kind of thing. I mean, just look at what we used to have to work with:

What I've found amusing in all this is the gaggle of reporting on where we came from to where we are today. I include a list of 25 top PCs (topped by an Apple of all things) and a quick gallery of GUIs from the past couple decades.

While not directly related, more new from the internet, starting with a(nother) list of the top 15 influential websites. Plus a story from Slate on how to group those who search the internet. The data is mined from AOL users so, you know, keep that in mind.

From the evil side of the internet, the RIAA has decided to sue the family of a man they accuse of downloading music illegally. Of course, they are going to give them "time to grieve" as he is dead. What's next? Debtor's prisons?

In Iran, President Ahmadinejad has started up a blog. The link is a story about the blog; I really have no interests in sending you a link to an anti-Semite - thus the lack of Mel Gibson news from me lately. My only comment on this is why the hell is the leader of a nation notorious for censoring free speech and shutting down bloggers starting one up himself? Irony isn't enough; hypocrisy comes to mind though.

More news about Net Neutrality. There is a group called It's Our Net you can go to to get more info. Educate yourself lest our surfing becomes absorbed by corporate goons much like the rest of our popular culture.

Well, added my new hard drive and moved/repartioned a bunch of stuff around. Tried loading Vista and - oops - not even my DVD-ROM drivers are good enough to do the install. Back to the drawing board I guess.

In the meantime, I am slowly converting pages on the main domain. Sorry for taking so long with all that.

Not running a real huge interest in posting tonight as I am in the home stretch of an on-call but still working a case here and there. Maybe I'll get some good sleep and get back to posting as the week goes on.

I did note this today though. Seems as if the Swiss might have to back off on their centuries of neutrality slogan.

I'm looking to get a new flash drive and maybe a portable drive with my next check. With that in mind, I've been searching across the 'net and ended up finding a good article on Lifehacker, which is one of my daily stops anyway.

Here's another article on many other things you can do with your flash drive.

Enjoy.

Got an IM last week with some recommendations on site registry and hosting. I didn't have much to offer as I have my site hosted on a server in the UK and haven't done much shopping as I'm happy enough with them.

That said, here's an article on some green solutions that look neat. Not sure about their uptime statistics, but it should sounds like a nice way to host your site.

If any of you give one of these guys a shot, I'd be interested in your experience.

I have to run out and build servers as part of my jobs, and supporting workstations as well. Some of these locations are in fairly rural areas and, increasingly, on ships with teeny little satellite connections. So, you could imagine I don't have days to sit around and wait for Windows Updates to download and install, much less download them in batches myself.

For awhile I have been using the fine tool from the gang at AutoPatcher, which rolls out updates easily. It has different flavors for various Windows OSs and has never failed me. However, all good things come to an end and there is no difference with this. Microsoft sent a cease-and-desist to folks just trying to provide a useful tool to us hardworking IT stiffs and the AutoPatcher guys broke the bad news just the other day.

That said, if you are in need of such a tool, I found one decent mirror to get the final Core kits and updates. I've grabbed everything I needed and hope you can make use of the final releases yourself if you find the need to grab them.

EvilNed was kind enough to hook me up with a Grand Central account. Thanks Ned.

Incidentally, I apparently now have a few of these invites to give out too so if you want one, let me know.

For now, I picked a 309 area code number so you home folks can call me without too much hassle. I picked a Monmouth number out of a hat basically and I'll give it to you if you hit me with a message or some form of communication.

The web button will allow someone to call your Grand Central number without giving out the number. I really don't expect that I would get any serious calls this way, but I figured I would throw it out here. As one can with any calls coming in, you can configure how the call is handled. Right now I've got it redirected to my cell phone, but if looks like it is being abused, I'll just have it go to my Grand Center voicemail.

Otherwise, use the following. I'll find a place on the main website to put it too. More likely than not the Contact page.

Now I've tried this out and if you click the button, it will call your phone, then call mine and I'll have to accept the call based on your name. So stick around a moment if you try this. I'll eventually pick up.

I never really did comment much on this because I never followed up on it much but I was re-reading an old E-Week mag and ran across this article about the Russian attacks on Estonia's ISPs back in May.

Here is another article on the same subject with some more detail.

And given recent news that most malware is created in China, that the Chinese were apparently trying to hack the Pentagon and that Russia and China are spying on us at Cold War levels and it just makes me a bit more worried. I mean, look around. Bush hasn't been doing that great of a job of securing the ol' homeland, despite his rhetoric.

The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.

- Bill Nye, Interview with Wired.com, April 2005

As mentioned, I was in Arizona last week and worked some long hours. I spent the weekend recovering from that and then just plain hit a writer's block wall. Strange, considering I usually just link to stuff with little commentary but that's my excuse. Deal with it.

Some technology news and assorted oddities for you today. We start off with the return of vinyl records and how they and downloadable MP3s may finally kill the CD. Turns out - big surprise - that CDs are increasingly not as musically rich as records were. They started off that way by necessity and never got any better as record labels kept finding ways to cut costs - they seem to make money by suing their customers.

Hell, I can't even remember when I last bought a CD.

Coming soon: terabyte flash drives. I don't stand in line for a lot of new technology, but I might make an exception for this.

Miniaturization on the battlefield.

This one is kind of disturbing. Turns out human beings are technically a human-bacteria hybrid.

Discussing the supposed eco-friendly diapers and the idea of going through an airport without showing ID.

Plus, a story about the history of the Toyota Prius.

A post about the top conspiracy theories plus one about the all-time worst plagues.

Plus, being Halloween, a story about the science of making scary movies.

I've got a few tech-related links to pass along, some more relevant and useful than others.

Enjoy.

First off, some things you can do with your obsolete technology once it has outlived it's usefulness.

Speaking of old tech left by the wayside, New York City recently cut the last DC electrical line. By last, it is definitely the last line in NYC, but most likely the world.

The Car Talk guys say that our automakers can easily get cars to 35 MPG using already available technology. And hell, if those guys can figure it out, you know Detroit is lying. Seriously, have you heard their radio show? Great guys, funny, but more importantly, they're mechanical geniuses.

Some notes from a pandemic test. Um, we could probably do better.

Considering the coming end of the space shuttle era.

Hey! You know all those stories about lead-filled Chinese toys? Wanna know where some of that lead comes from? Well, according to this story, it comes from our slagged down computers we've thrown away. Instant karma, folks.