Neko Case… Hold On Hold On.

An optimist sees the best in the world, while a pessimist sees only the worst. An optimist finds the positive in the negative, and a pessimist can only find the negative in the positive.

For example, an avid duck hunter was in the market for a new bird dog. His search ended when he found a dog that could actually walk on water to retrieve a duck. Shocked by his find, he was sure none of his friends would ever believe him.

He decided to try to break the news to a friend of his, a pessimist by nature, and invited him to hunt with him and his new dog.

As they waited by the shore, a flock of ducks flew by. they fired, and a duck fell. The dog responded and jumped into the water. The dog, however, did not sink but instead walked across the water to retrieve the bird, never getting more than his paws wet. This continued all day long; each time a duck fell, the dog walked across the surface of the water to retrieve it.

The pessimist watched carefully, saw everything, but did not say a single word.

On the drive home the hunter asked his friend, “Did you notice anything unusual about my new dog?”

“I sure did,” responded the pessimist. “Your dog can’t swim!”

Bush’s comments were ‘bullshit’ from Politico.com

Sen. Joe Biden, piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the President of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.

Methinks that the Democrats are protesting too much.  That usually only happens when the message hits awfully darn close to the truth.

I just wonder who Biden plagiarized this statement from.

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?

If it was only this simple. 

You see, we have a lot of self deluded people out there.  Who seem to believe that a politician can say he means change would actually follow through.  Or provide positive change, and not just pandering to special interest groups.

Me, I know that the Democratic candidates are socialists, and the history of socialism is the same as the history of fascism.

In the past two days our government has been working hard (OK, hardly working) to save their environmentally friendly behinds. In doing so, they have thrown all of us under the bus (again).

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/36953.html

The big “wonderful” news was that they have voted to stop adding oil to our strategic reserve. Evidently, they have enough votes to override a veto (yes, Obama and Clinton actually came to Washington to get their meaningless votes added). And once again, this is only a temporary “fix” if that. Because once the reserve is depleted, then oil costs will return to pre-reserve-depletion prices. Oh, and we will not have any reserve oil, in case we have an actual emergency. But, politicians being the mindless drones that they are, fail to notice / realize / care about this…

The news that has been “hidden” largely in the news is a second vote that they took. I guess that the Senate wanted this vote to be taken quickly, before any of those nasty constituents got wind of it (ie those nasty constituents really went crazy over their pro-illegals legislation and really botched that up for them). So, our Senators voted to once again, disallow drilling in ANWR. The measure was killed by 4 votes.

The problem is, is that the only realistic longterm solution is for our country to get the our oil out of our land. There is no reason that our money should be going to fund dictators bent on our destruction. Our hard earned money could be going to our countries’ oil, funding jobs in our country, providing wages in our country, which would then again have those workers spending money in our country.

How can our country survive if we are going to continue to liberally fund other countries who are bent on our destruction?

Windows Hash Generator is a command line too used to give you the cryptographic hash for a file. A good example of when you would like to use this program is when you download an ISO image of a CD or DVD. The hash output is commonly given on the download page. After completing the download, use this program to generate the hash of the file you have. It should match if the download completed correctly. 

Implements the following crypto hash algorithms:

• md5
• sha1
• sha256
• sha384
• sha512
• ripemd160

Available here at Digital Labs.

13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers

A 13 year old from Texas who stole his Dad’s credit card and ordered two hookers from an escort agency, has today been convicted of fraud and given a three year community order.

Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old from Newark, Texas confessed to ordering an extra credit card from his father’s existing credit card company, and took his friends on a $30,000 spending spree, culminating in playing “Halo” on an Xbox with a couple of hookers in a Texas motel.

Wait just a minute.. They played Halo with the hookers?  Wow.

Asked why he ordered two escorts, Ralph said he thought it was the thing to do when you win a “World of Warcraft” tournament. They told the suspicious working girls they were people of restricted growth working with a traveling circus, and as State law does not allow those with disabilities to be discriminated against they had no right to refuse them.

Hehheh, now that’s some quick thinking.  Using state law as an excuse to break the law.

The $1,000 a night girls sensing something up played “Halo” on the Xbox with the kids, instead of selling their sexual services.

Only a grand a night?  Wow, that idiot governor from New York spent way too much.

That’s what one of my hard drives did last night. Got 2 SATA drives in a RAID0 stripe. So one goes and the whole system goes.

However, it’s limping along just well enough that I’m online and making sure I have everything backed up properly just in case. Soon we’ll find out how well Vista’s whole drive backup works. Theoretically I put in the new drives, stick in the Vista CD, and then select restore at some point and give it my backup external drive. Then everything should restore exactly as I had everything just last week.

*Update*

1. Went to Circuit City and picked up 2 new SATA drives. 30min.
2. Removed existing hard drives. 5 min.
3. Installed two new drives into the case. 5 min.
4. Turned on system and configured new RAID configuration on the drives. 2 min.
5. Boot off Vista DVD. 3 min.
6. Selected Repair, Restore from Full Drive Backup. 1 min.
7. Mowed grass. 1 hour.
8. Booted up system from bare metal restore. 2 min.

Now I’m working just where I left everything off on the last backup from 1 week ago.  Exactly.  Wonderfully.

So can XP do this? Linux do this? Mac? Anything else? Bare metal, full drive, exact bit by bit restore with nothing more than the installation DVD and an external hard drive that you made the backup on. Sorry, none of those do it without extra software. Mac apparently comes close, but Time Machine doesn’t quite cut it apparently.

All you Vista haters should take a lesson from this. This was one of my most impressive and easiest to handle emergencies in all my years working in IT.

Sure with Vista you need newer hardware. Go back to a Pentium III with 128mb of RAM with a new release of Linux and see if you can get all the new bells and whistles going. Of course you can’t.

I’m trying to get Ubuntu 8.04 working with an old laptop. It has a old Linksys WPC54G PCMCIA wireless card. Doesn’t work. The instructions tell you first get a network connection. WTF? That’s what I’m trying to get enabled damnit. You can’t just download what you need on another system even. Just pathetic. I know Linux, used it for years. Desktop replacement? Not quite there yet…

After Mark Twain finished addressing a New England society banquet, the attorney William M. Evarts stood up, hands in his pockets, and remarked, “Does it not seem unusual to this gathering that a professional humorist should really appear funny?”

To which Mark Twain replied, “Does it not also appear strange to this assembly that a lawyer should have his hands in his own pockets?”

According to Obama at least.

Worst thing is I just bought the flag a few weeks ago.

(more…)

Maow. Gotta be weird today. (more…)

Answer below…

(more…)

Check out the OS on that system…

The owner of a drugstore arrives at work to find a man leaning heavily against a wall. The owner goes inside and asks his clerk what’s up.
“He wanted something for his cough, but I couldn’t find the cough syrup,” the clerk explains. “So I gave him a laxative and told him to take it all at once.”
“Laxatives won’t cure a cough, you idiot,” the owner shouts angrily.
“Sure it will,” the clerk says, pointing at the man leaning on the wall. “Look at him. He’s afraid to cough.”

So I see in my firewall logs attempted external connections to tcp port 41319 all day long.  Like every minute or two.  They’re all blocked, but there are so many of them, you’d think you’d be able to find something about that port quickly on google or something.

Anyone know what bot/worm is using this port?

Not another man bites dog story.

The driver of a 1997 Honda Civic that struck and killed a dog near Cloquet is suing the dog’s owners for damage done to his vehicle.

Jeffery Ely was driving on the night of Jan. 4 when Fester, a miniature pinscher, squeezed past owner Nikki Munthe as she was letting in her other dog and ran out onto the road. Ely’s car struck Fester, killing the 13-pound dog instantly.

Now Ely is suing the Munthes for about $1,100 for damage to his car, time he had to take off from his two jobs to get the car repaired, and court fees.

First the disclaimer:  Last year someone in town was letting their dog run free, it ran across the road and I hit it with my truck.  I was in the far right lane during heavy traffic going under the speed limit, 40mph.  I hit the dog in front of a woman who was walking her own dog just over on the sidewalk.  The dog was dead on impact.

I had no damage to my truck but I would have been even more pissed that someone left their dog running free had I any damage.

Pieces of the bumper were propelled into the radiator when it hit the dog, Ely said, necessitating a replacement. Ely maintains he didn’t have problems driving until after the accident and that the radiator issues were not pre-existing.

Ely said he feels sorry for the Munthes’ loss but, as a dog owner himself, feels that they must be responsible for their pets’ actions.

Agreed.  Another disclaimer: the dog I owned growing up was running loose and was hit by a car and killed.  It was our fault for letting the dog run free, not the driver’s fault.

“I have complete compassion for them,” Ely said. “I know how it feels. I love dogs. But once you get them, they are your responsibility.”

Munthe said she has always been worried about the busy road the family lives on.

“We would have never let him off-leash because we’re so terrified of this road,” she said.

The case will be heard in St. Louis County Court on Friday.

This should be straight forward.  The Munthe’s home insurance should pay to have the car repaired.  Their actions, even though apparently accidental, caused damage to someone else’s property.

The Munthes have filed a $2,400 countersuit against Ely for the cost to buy Fester, the time they had to take off work for court appearances, and the cost of buying a dog to replace Fester.

What?  Now this is ridiculous.  I know these people feel a  loss but it is their fault.  Not only that, they’re double dipping.  If someone damaged my car in an accident, they don’t pay for the current car and a new car.  I’m sorry for their loss but this is the abuse of the system.  In my opinion the Munthes deserve to lose their case and have to pay full damages to Ely, along with his court costs.  These people are the problem.  They may be perfectly nice decent people normally but not in this case.  They should have immediately offered to pay either out of their own pockets or filed a case with the insurance company.

Via FOXNews.com

It’s a good time to make sure you have the right address registered with your VOIP provider, such as Vonage or the cable company.

A Canadian toddler has died after a VOIP-based 911 call sent an ambulance to the wrong address.

Last week, as reported by the CBC, a Calgary family dialed 911 via their internet phone service when 18-month-old Elijah Luck went into medical distress. Their VOIP provider, Comwave, then dispatched an ambulance to the family’s former home in Mississauga, Ontario, more than twenty-five-hundred miles away.

Another case where tech moves faster than society can handle.

via The Register

If I had but one life to give for my country, it would be a lawyer’s.

Anyone who knows me will confirm that I am a BSG fan.  I loved the original series… and I love the re-imagined series even more.  Lately, I have been reading a lot of the fan theories on who the final Cylon model is going to be.  I have read some really good theories that I thought were well argued and logical.  However, none of them seemed to sit just right with me.

In my mind, the final Cylon has to be someone who can hide in plain sight.  It would be someone who could probably find a way into areas where he/she could impose influence upon others (but would probably not be in actual direct contact with the ship’s command).  It would be someone minor and humble that no one would think twice about.

So I got to thinking… the producers just love to leave little clues around and hope that no one picks up on them.  And some of these clues aren’t even in the series itself (such as the “Last Supper” photo).  That’s one of the things I love about this show… it’s a constant enigma.

So I decided to do some investigating.  I pulled out my DVD copies of Seasons 1-3 and was going to review them again… when a thought occurred to me.  What if the clue to the last Cylon are not in the episodes themselves.  I change my approach and went to the DVD’s special features.  I looked at the interviews, featurettes, sketch work, etc… but I finally found what I was looking for in the delete scenes.

If I’m right, then these minor clues were left on the cutting room floor intentionally and inserted as useless deleted scenes just to throw everyone off the trail.  So let’s take a look at them.  Go ahead and pull out your copy of Season 1, Disc 5… and look at each of the key deleted scenes for the episode “Water”.

• Boomer awakens dripping wet after having planted the explosives and immediately notices the strange rust-colored residue on her hands.  She opens her bag and pulls out a towel to wipe her hands clean.
• Boomer slinks into her quarters and stows her bag of damp and dirty gear in her locker.  She closes the locker and is surprised by the sudden appearance of Boxey.  She begins to stammer about where she has been.  Boxey dismisses her with a “Whatever”, and she rushes from the room.  After her departure, he immediately picks the lock on Boomer’s locker and pulls out her bag.  The footage makes a point of demonstrating that he finds the rust-covered towel.
• Tyrol is investigating the destroyed water tank, and examines a piece of the tank with burn marks on it.  When he pulls his hand away, he notices that it is covered in rust residue.
• Tyrol and Boxey are walking into Boomer’s quarters and Boxey calls out… “Hey!  Way to go, Boomer! ‘Heard you saved the frakin’ world!”  Tyrol grabs him, and pushes him back outside before locking the door.
• Boxey cuts off Crashdown on his way to find Boomer and offers to sell him a bottle of ambrosia.  (Thus, ensuring Tyrol and Boomer have their privacy.)
• Tyrol emerges from Boomer’s room, and confronts Boxey for making kissy faces at him.  He notices that Boxey has the rusty towel, and recalls what Boomer told him about the explosives.  He asks where Boxey where he got it, and immediately starts to explain that those kind of towels can be found anywhere.  Boxey dismisses him with a “Whatever”.  Tyrol departs.

So what can we take from all this?
Why did Boomer and Tyrol feel it was necessary to explain themselves to a child?
Why did Boxey go through Boomer’s stuff?
Why did he feel it was necessary to take the towel?

… because it was Boxey who was planting the original seeds of doubt.  He was setting off a series of events that would cascade throughout the fleet.

Put simply… because Boxey is the last Cylon model.

It must have been Boxey who initially “activated” Season 1’s Galactica-Boomer.  He had the access to be alone with her.  He made sure that Boomer and Tyrol had some private time together to discuss the detonator that was discovered in her Raptor.

His unexplained presentation of the towel to Tyrol made him seriously doubt Boomer’s story.  Additionally, it could have been Boxey who wrote the word “CYLON” on Boomer’s locker mirror in the episode “Six Degrees of Separation” in an effort to further push her over the edge towards revealing herself.

Frak!  Perhaps “Whatever” is even some kind of trigger word that can cause a Cylon to dismiss Boxey’s existence and depart to prevent them from discovering too much too soon.

What?!  It’s no more unfathomable than any other theory out there.

From Obnoxious Droppings

My boy is also flatulent in several languages.

That’s just damn funny, I don’t care who you are.