Been a busy week. Besides the normal holiday stuff, parties, people to visit, etc., I’ve been working on a new software release. After all the bugs and such worked out, a good bit of polish applied, WiSSH 2.5 is now in production.

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished this release, it looks to be extremely stable, and should make for a nice time before I have to work on a new version. So enjoy!

“Well it’s a complex thing, bypassing Windows security. I mean you’ll have to boot from a CD…”
“Yes, and then?”
“That’s pretty much it.” — BOFH

I want to see this on TV.

(more…)

This is why, and what many can’t understand.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin…

From the letters to the editors…

Descriptions of assailants left out basic information.

The News Journal printed an article describing a horrible incident in Pocomoke City, Md. A woman was held and raped for three days. I assume that one of the major reasons for giving the article such prominent placement is to ask the public to look out for the perpetrators.

How do you expect any help when you publish such ridiculous descriptions? For some reason, the article failed to mention race. Why?

If the victim did not know the men’s race or ethnicity, tell us that. However, if she said they were white, black, Hispanic or whatever, why not publish this?

I don’t care what race they are. But do not pretend to seek the public’s help when you give us no information. From the description provided in the newspaper, it is possible that two of the three could have been at our house for Christmas.

Joanne Reilly, Hockessin

Hi Joanne. You know the answer already. The “reporters” at the “news” papers have to try to increase readership without offending anyone.

Now, I’m a fan of having a section of the paper list the photo, crime, sentence, and any other pertinent details about anyone convicted of a felony. Equal opportunity type thing. That would be an interesting read, and it will let people know who is commiting the crimes. No whitewash, no picking and choosing. Just the facts…
Nothing should be listed until a conviction except that a crime occured. The exception is for the be on the lookout kind of thing.

We covered the Rules for driving a few posts back. Seems that teaching people what they should have learned in driver’s ed but didn’t because the teacher had tinted windows in his car and always smelled of Jack Daniels is finally catching on.
WikiHow has a post on “How to Avoid Annoying Other Drivers”

You are driving between a mechanical device meant to explode the contents of the most lethal fluid around, sitting behind you, built by the cheapest bidder. It is in your best interest to pay attention when operating a motor vehicle and to think.

Covers most of the same rules as I did, but is a lot more descriptive. It boils down to if you can’t drive, don’t.

“She also messed up her foot at that Jell-O wrestling, when she was on the trampoline.”

Wow, I can’t believe that up to this point, with all the votes, more people roast their own coffee than anything.

What I find more amazing is that no one admits to brewing drip coffee out of a can of Folger’s or the like. That’s just crazy!

Spreadin’ the word to: Wizbang

Japan-A-Radio has been broadcasting online since 2001. They’re having an end of year fundraiser so they can continue into 2006. Give a listen and if you like it, join up. I just prepaid for a year…

Wife decries ’senseless’ mob beating

City officials asked for the public’s help in finding the assailants, believed to be between 16 and 23 years old.As many as 15 youths punched, kicked and jumped on McClain after he honked his horn for them to move out of the street, police said. It was the latest in a string of mob beatings in the city since 2002.

I have a solution to this type of problem.

Battle Royale!!!

Take all these little bastards, throw ‘em on an island for three days with various weapons, and see who survives. Of course, it would all be televised. And the winners would be put down also, but hey, thats entertainment!

Linked to Mudville Gazette..

The Finest of Heroes

“Shawn didn’t choose the Army as a last resort, nor did he join the Army for money for college,” said Richard Beattie, 37, Moudy’s cousin. “The Army was Shawn’s calling. He carried a rifle to protect the weak, to intimidate would-be aggressors and to bring freedom to those who don’t have it.“

So anyway, (as most of my stories start this way)… I’m sitting at work drinking coffee and fiddling with one of my servers… when the phone rings. So I answer it… (otherwise, why have one?)

It was a talent scout… looking to hire. Mr. HR Guy had called me out of the blue. Great! Ummm…. two problems… I never heard of the company before, and they had the wrong guy! You’ll see… here’s how the conversation went:

Me: Hello?
HR Guy: Mr. Anarchy? Mr. Matthew Anarchy?
Me (wondering what he’s selling): Yes?
HR: Hello. My name is David Togoodtobetrue from Nameless Insurance Company.
Me: Hello Mr. Toogoodtobetrue.
HR: Please, call me David. I’ve been doing my research on you. I’ve examined your resume and experiences, and I have been speaking with a few individuals you know… and we would like to extend an opportunity to you.
Me (getting a little excited, but still a bit suspicious): Tell me about it. I’m always open to entertaining an offer.
HR: We feel that you would be ideal to bring on as one of our vice-presidents, and to place you as the lead of our Cinncinati office.
Me (dumbstruck… almost speechless): Ummm… OK. Go on…
HR: This office is still young, and is in need of someone to make it a success.
Me (still dumbstruck): Tell me more…
HR: From what we understand, you’ve had alot of experience in insurance sales… and we think you’ll be just the element we need to make this new site a succcess. We’d like you to start by February if that is possible.

Now… I’ve never sold insurance in my life. He’s got the wrong guy. I start to put it together. My name is Matthew A. Anarchy. There’s a Matthew P. Anarchy working as a fancy exec type in my company’s finance department. I’ll be that’s who he thinks he’s talking to. The conversation continues for a little bit longer, but I’m having trouble controlling the laughter.

HR: Ah… you want to hear about the compensation package.
Me: Yes, please… ,
HR: We’re prepared to offer you a full benefits suite, company stock, moving expenses, we’ll help you find a house, and start you off with a salary of $160,0…

And you know… at that exact moment, the only thing that crossed my mind was: I wonder how long I could pull this off?

Well… I corrected his error. Told him that I wasn’t who he was looking for, and directed him to the correct Matthew Anarchy’s phone number.

The bastard… I should get a finder’s fee or something.

Using my new Mr. Bento for lunch today… I’ll have an update with how it works…

Been on the beta for a few weeks, but WP 2.0 is out.

In fact, I’m probably the first site to run the active code that wasn’t a pre-test site:  I hit the wordpress.org site as they were changing over the website code, and hit download to get a file not found.

5 seconds later, I hit download again, and got the file.

I just hope the couple bugs I reported are fixed!  I see that one is at least.

Found at Mostly Cajun….

Secluded Hideaway You scored 10 out of 40 on urban-rural and 7 out of 40 land intensity.

People know you as: The Unabomber Quote: “Other people make me sad.” Let’s get something straight right off the bat: You don’t much like other people. Your score indicates that you prefer a rural atmosphere to an urban one and the very lowest land intensities possible. You would be happy in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere or on a tropical island with no one - not even a beautiful naked islander - to keep you company. Above all, you yearn just to be left alone. If you aren’t one already, you should consider becoming a hermit and moving to Montana. Examples of places you should live: Mount Everest, Siberia All Categories Secluded Hideaway / Farm or Ranch / Small Town / Little City / Suburb / Streetcar Suburb / Rowhouse ‘Hood / Downtown Loft

C₈H₁₀N₄O₂ is your friend!!! Fine, don’t get out the old chemistry textbook. It’s caffeine.
So where do you get your fix from? Got a new poll over on the right. Coffees, teas, colas, or ground up and snorted.

Me, I generally favor all of the above. But its the details that count.

Here’s a great guide:

Espresso 100mg to 150mg a cup.
Instant coffee 65mg to 100mg a cup.
Decaffeinated, instant 2mg to 3mg a cup.
Tea 40mg to 80mg a cup
Cocoa and chocolate drinks 40mg to 80mg a cup.
Cola 35mg to 50mg a 330ml can.
Chocolate 150mg a family-sized bar.
Red Bull Marketed as an energy drink, a 250ml can provides taurine, a stimulating amino acid, and about 80mg of caffeine.
ProPlus With 50mg of caffeine a tablet, it has gained a reputation for giving an instant jolt to the weary.
Guarana This berry, grown in northern Brazil, produces seeds with the caffeine-containing substance guaranine. Drunk as carbonated cola, it contains two to three times more caffeine than coffee or tea.

It’s open trackback day… So work on your masterpiece of blogdom, and then link and trackback to this page.

While it may not help your TTLB score, I’ll generally hit all the sites, and permanently link in the blogroll if you have good stuff.
That is all…

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

I have this cut out of a newspaper from many years ago, and I keep it in a box of a few special things.

Go visit the Gary’s new site… Pick up some software over at Tom’s.  Say Hi to Jason!  And to Bob, Damo, Hiroki, JT, Ryan, Kevin, Matt&Katie, Carol, Jeff & Sherry, Brad, Jim, Bruce, Scott, Tim, Joe, Dave, and all the rest, Merry Christmas folks.

To all our readers here, thank you for stopping by.  We like having you!

From Lori…

Santa has not always appeared the way we think of him today. The first well-known gift-giver was a true person–St. Nicholas. He lived in Myra (today we know it as Turkey) in about 300A.D. Born an only child of a wealthy family, he was orphaned at an early age when both parents died of the plague. He grew up in a monastery and at the age of 17 became one of the youngest priests ever. Many stories are told of his generosity as he gave his wealth away in the form of gifts to those in need, especially children. Legends tell of him either dropping bags of gold down chimneys or throwing the bags through the windows where they landed in the stockings hung from the fireplace to dry. Some years later Nicholas became a bishop–hence the bishop’s hat or miter, long flowing gown, white beard and red cape. After his death he was elevated to sainthood. Eventually the Catholic Church started celebrating Christmas and St. Nicholas was incorporated into the season.

Please read the rest for the full story…

Darn right. I knew it was a hoax from the first story. Now it comes out that the UMass student was a liar, the professors involved are complete fricking idiots, and the “reporter” was nothing more than a parrot.

Federal agents’ visit was a hoax

Student admits he lied about Mao book
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writerNEW BEDFORD — The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for “The Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.
The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.
Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.
But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details.
The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student’s uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.
But when Dr. Williams went to the student’s home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.
It was a dramatic turnaround from the day before.
For more than an hour on Thursday, he spoke of two visits from Homeland Security over his inter-library loan request for the 1965, Peking Press version of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung,” which is the book’s official title.
His basic tale remained the same: The book was on a government watch list, and his loan request had triggered a visit from an agent who was seeking to “tame” reading of particular books. He said he saw a long list of such books.
In the days after its initial reporting on Dec. 17 in The Standard-Times, the story had become an international phenomenon on the Internet. Media outlets from around the world were requesting interviews with the students, and a number of reporters had been asking UMass Dartmouth students and professors for information.
The story’s release came at a perfect storm in the news cycle. Only a day before, The New York Times had reported that President Bush had allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps on international phone calls from the United States without a warrant. The Patriot Act, created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to allow the government greater authority to monitor for possible terrorism activities, was up for re-authorization in Congress.
…..

The story continues on about how all involved were nothing more than pawns, were all too willing to believe that government agents “dressed like men-in-black” were out to crush their rights… blah blah blah.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the early Christmas present to me!

Lets see if those idiots at slashdot will pick up the retraction.

Spreadin’ the word at Wizbang