End of An Era

Well, my Jetta is now out of warranty. :-( I am somewhat nostalgic since I have gone all over the place in it. I have driven to Yosemite, Mono Lake, Joshua Tree (twice), the Grand Canyon, Idaho, the High Desert of Eastern Oregon and Washington, Nevada, Sequoia National Park, Lassen National Park, Lake Tahoe, Pinnacles, Big Sur, Hollywood, Disneyland, all over Maine, and all over the San Fracisco Bay Area. Here's to several hundred thousand more miles. Long may she run!

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Geysers On Enceladus

Saw this on slashdot the other day. The Cassini probe to Saturn has recorded geysers of some kind of material coming off the moon Enceladus. Another picture here. A short article here.

Back In the Saddle?

Ok, it looks like this little hack makes ecto and blogger play nice. That would be swell.

Is this working?

Yet another attempt to get ecto working with blogger.

Back to Work

Had a pretty good weekend. Two, count 'em two Thanksgiving dinners. Way too much food. Lots of lounging around. Watched the Firefly box set. Shame that show got cancelled. Got a few chores done on Sunday. Now back to the grind.

Merry F***ing Christmas

So I check out my morning paper today and on the front page is a story about Black Friday and evidently some shoppers at the Wal Mart in Mountain View (There's a Wal Mart in Mountain View? Who knew?) became so unruly about getting that extra $22 off the $400 HP notebook computers that the cops had to be called. It's 22 frickin bucks, people! I know that buys a lot of tinsel, but come on!

Peace on Earth, indeed. [article] (subscription or bugmenot required)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just got off the phone with my mom and gram. I am so looking forward to going back home in just a month. They're having a White Thanksgiving there. Woot! I am certainly thankful for what I have in life and I hope all my friends are too.

Atari 800 Laptop

Behold, the Atari 800 laptop. Let no one say I have too much time on my hands. [article]

Ye-Haw: Texas AG Announces Lawsuit Against Sony

The Texas Attorney General announced that the state of Texas is suing Sony with one of its anti-spyware laws because of the Sony CD rootkit shenanigans, I've written about earlier. At $100,000 per violation, this could be quite expensive for Sony, since upwards of half a million rooted PCs are estimated to be out in the wild. I never thought I'd be happy to hear about a case the state of Texas was bringing, but here it is! California and I believe New York are also engaging in legal action against Sony because of the rootkit. [article]

Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire

Went with a bunch of people last night to see this latest Harry Potter biopic. This is probably my favorite (so far) of the books and the movie delivered! The CG was omnipresent and impressive. I thought they did a decent job in paring down the story to fit into a sub-three hour movie. The pacing was good. I might just go see this one again.

Weekend Concert Goodness!

Holy Attack of the Living Goths, Batman! I saw Depeche Mode Friday and Nine Inch Nails Saturday night.

Friday (Happy Goth Night): Noelle scored some excellent seats in the center close to the front where she, Carl, and I got treated to Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher, and those other guys. Pretty cool set. They had this orb (it reminded me of the fake planet from the opening of Mystery Science Theater) that mostly displayed random relevant lyrics and song titles. The guys in the back did their keyboard stuff in these weird doughnut shaped panels. Dave Gahan's voice is still excellent. The sound was quality, although loud (I didn't put my right earplug all the way in and my ear was ringing for a couple hours thereafter.). High points were "Enjoy the Silence" and "Everything Counts". They trotted out most of the hits (missed "Master and Servant", alas) and a lot of stuff from the new album (I think). Very happy, enthusiastic crowd. I don't think I saw anyone sitting in the crowd, which is pretty unusual for a large venue.

Saturday (Dark Goth Night): Dave drove Wendy, Noelle, and me to the Oakland arena, which is growing on me as a venue. Autolux and Queens of the Stone Age opened. I really like QotSA, but I don't particularly like their latest album. And that was about half of their hour longish set. I did get to see the beautiful Bel Aire guitar that I've been coveting since I saw the video for "Little Sister." (Hmm, there might be profit sharing coming up, hmm.) Of the songs that I liked, I thought their performance was excellent. However, the NIN show was unquestionably the highlight of the evening. The sound was good. The lighting was good. The crowd was (mostly) really into it. And Trent was fucking on, baby! I liked it so much, I'm going back to see them in Santa Cruz on the 6th. :-) Cool looking tix, too. :-) Mucho thanks to Dave and Wendy for inviting me along!

Dammit Blogger

For the past couple of weeks I've had to compose posts from the blogger dashboard instead of using ecto, my preferred blog client. Bugged blogger support about it, but haven't heard back from a human. This, combined with being kinda busy </understatement> at work have lead to little blogging of late. Maybe more tomorrow.

Aqualung My Friend

Had a splendid evening watching Jethro Tull at the beautiful Avalon Ballroom in Oakland last night. I was initially somewhat skeptical when Noelle suggested it, since I think Ian Anderson is in his 90s now. However, Ian, Martin Barre and the others still put on an excellent show. They played almost all the songs from the Aqualung album, some songs from the Christmas album and others over their career for 2+ hours. And we got a free live CD of Aqualung. How cool is that? The live version of Thick As A Brick was surprisingly good (I am kind of tired of hearing that one.). The first set was the quieter, more acoustic set and the second set was the "loud" one. It wasn't really that loud. For once, I left my earplugs out. Good sound in the Avalon.

The crowd was weird. I have gotten used to being in the aged part of the demographic, not the young whippersnapper part. There were some kids there, but it seemed to mostly be older types. And some of them seem to have forgotten how to act when high in public. Or (as is my fear) they are what happens to band nerds with no social skills when they get older. Like the dipshits behind us who kept loudly talking all through the first act. I was shocked to see how old they were. Anyway, other than those clowns, I had no disappointments. Well, other than the fact that they didn't play Songs From the Wood or Minstrel in the Gallery. <snif>

Sony Rootkit Issues Come Home to Roost

So some Bad Person has figured out that they can exploit the rootkit that Sony installs on its DRM protected CD to conceal their trojan on Windows PCs. It also appears that they install some files on Macs too, so there is a potential for vulnerability there too. In a related story, it appears that some class action suits are pending against Sony about this. For once, I think this is a good idea. Sony needs to be taught an object lesson that it is not cool to screw around with people's computers.

Kansas Board of Education Redefines Science

So, not really much to my surprise, the Kansas Board of Education voted to permit Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution in school curricula. Ok, so I guess we can peddle the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of creation next, but anyway... What really caught my eye was the last line of the article:

"In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."

Whatwhatwhat? They redefined science? So now we can use science to search for supernatural explanation of phenomena??? Have these people heard of The Enlightenment? Ok, maybe not the best example, there were a lot deists, etc that came out that. Scientific Method, anyone? Hello? Bueller? Hello?

I'd love to see how they empirically test their hypotheses to explain supernatural phenomena. [article]

Death Row Escapee Caught While Drunk, Talking On Pay Phone

A convicted double-murderer who spent three days on the run after slipping away from a Houston jail was recaptured some 200 miles away — drunk and talking on a pay phone. This is pretty much how I expect these things to play out.

What's more impressive is how he managed to sneak a set of civilian clothes from the court house into his jail cell and then get past four jail employees without being discovered before making his escape. Some suspect he had help: "He's not the sharpest pencil in the box" said the sister of one of his victims.

The Truth (With Jokes)

Just finished reading this latest Al Franken work. Franken, as usual, mixes up the truth with some humor, which is good, because the truth tends to be teeth grittingly disturbing. I now have (among other things) even more reason to dislike Tom DeLay than I did before (DeLay appears to be for sweatshops, forced servitude, forced prostitution, and even forced abortions (!), which don't seem to jibe well with his socially conservative exterior. Oh yeah, and the man who has publicly railed against ambulance chasing lawyers and tried to get the government to intervene to keep Terry Schiavo alive, evidently had different feelings when life support was removed from his father, who was incapacitated by a freak accident. And when he later sued the company that manufactured the equipment that had incapacitated his father. Asshole.).

Besides DeLay, Franken lambastes other members of Congress, the obvious targets in the White House, and selected members of the media. He really seems to dislike Sean Hannity. Anyway, it was a good read. I recommend it, if you can stomach more political chicanery.

Serenity Take Two

Went and saw a late show of Serenity tonight. Still good on the second viewing. There were a surprising number of people there, I thought, for a 10:45pm show.

Civic Duty

Man, I am so glad I get to spend my valuable time voting on the nonsense on the ballot this year. Thanks a bunch, Arnold. Again. I'll be thinking of you fondly in 2008.

More Halloween Pics

(click to see album)

A few more random pictures I took today of folks in costume.

Sony Music CD Installs Rootkit???

Some of Sony's copy protected CDs install a rootkit on Windows machines that mount them. Rootkits, for those of you not familiar with the term, are collections of applications that hide the presence of foreign components (usually worms and viruses, but DRM in this case) so that people don't know that they're running "extra" stuff. Worse, this particular kit sucks down CPU time even when you're not using the CD and can hose up your system if you try and remove them (and you don't know what you're doing). I cannot believe Sony has the balls to put this on their CDs. It's a time bomb waiting to happen. The article written by the dude who found this problem is here.