The wife is in the hospital with meningitis. Spent all day in the ER doing the very not fun tests. We find out tomorrow if it is viral or bacterial. Either way she’ll get several days of IV injections and hopefully as many pain meds as she can take.
So blogging here by me will be pretty light this week.

“Huffington Post started as a hoax.”

Tearful Onion intern admits guilt

Johnny Knuckles Exclusive Report

Two years ago, an idealistic Jenny Trenton accepted an internship at The Onion, self-described as “America’s Finest News Source.”

…

“I had an idea that I though was funny as hell. I’d start a hoax site where I’d write fictitious articles under the name of dim-witted celebrities about the most important issues of our age… or the very least important issues. Brilliant, huh? What could go wrong?”

Using nothing but her pluck and ability to write inanities in the name of others, Jenny started the Huffington Post.

“I named it after this dopey foreigner I caught on a cable talk show.”

You gotta read the rest.  I just love this kind of stuff.

Below is a letter that a CA woman wrote to her local paper. The paper refused to publish it, since the letter expressed opinions that the paper did not support. Her husband has since sent the letter to his entire email list, many of whom then sent it further. I got the copy from my uncle. Here it is, in full, with no further comment from me.

From: ‘David LaBonte’
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to ‘print’ it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:

Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ell is Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented . Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.
Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German-American or the Irish-American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.

And here we are in 2008 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And as for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

(signed) Rosemary LaBonte

Not only does the guy have an interesting point, but he has a great sense of humor. Typical Texan, wow, they just don’t have many guys like him in the NorthEast (we are cursed with Biden, Kerry, Kennedy, etc…)

Friday night I noticed the central air conditioner doesn’t seem to be working well.  A quick check on the thermostat shows that while it was set for 74, and running, it was 78 in the house.  It’s never done that before.

I turned it off, waited a few minutes for the compressor to shut down, then started it back up again.  Grabbed the infra-red thermometer and started checking vents.  The same temperature was going in the returns as coming out.  Not a good sign.

Checked outside, the compressor was running.

Went to the basement and found all the copper tubing coated in a thick coat of ice.  That’s not right at all!

Seems the whole thing froze up on me.  Now, air conditioners are supposed to cool the air, but making ice isn’t a good thing.  Chipped off a good bit of the ice and I knew parts that should be warm were iced up also.  The fan was also struggling to move the air.

So shut off the entire system for at least 24 hours to let everything melt.  Luckily there’s a drain right there so no giant basement puddles for me.

Now, generally three different things could be the reason behind this.

• Blocked air vents.  Too little air flowing through the system is bad.  You should leave most of your vents open, even in rooms not being used as often.  If not, too little air circulates.  I went around and checked and all vents were clear.
• Leaking freon.  This isn’t a good thing.  Requires a visit and expensive coolant refill charges.  Won’t know until everything has melted, and we fire it all up again.  If it immediately freezes up again, then get on the AC contractors schedule.

Now, those are the major causes for 99% of the cases.  Wasn’t blocked vents, and was hoping it wasn’t a leak.  After restarting the system a few hours ago, and checking everything, my cause was the third reason:

• The vent for certain types of humidifier was open.

Yeah, that’s what I did.  The vent goes between the immediate exhaust back to the humidifier, and then back to the intake of the unit.  This way in the winter, hot air will travel from the exhaust through the humidifier area, sucking up moisture, and then get cycled back through the entire system.  In my case, cold air was immediately going back through the intake system.  While no water was in the humidifier, there was enough humidity to slowly build up.

So after all that, I’ve got the nice 18 degree difference between the returns and the vents, and things are back to where they should be.

Steven Den Beste is worried his server can’t handle the heat that he’s getting.

Long time ago I was a contract sys-admin for a nuke plant in south east Pennsylvania.  It was a nice cold day in February, about 18 inches of snow on the ground.  That’s when the heating system that fed the area of the building that held our server room decided to get stuck on full blast.

We had about 30-35 OS2 servers, lots of external full height 1gig drives (I said this was a long time ago!) in the center of the building on the third floor.  We opened the one door to the room, had a fan going full blast, but couldn’t do much.  The windows wouldn’t open on that floor of course.

It hit 115F in that server room.  Being a nuke plant, we couldn’t just turn everything off unfortunately.  So I’m on the phone with IBM asking a tech rep just how hot the servers could handle.  They said at 85F ambient they’d recommend shutting down.  I explained why we couldn’t shut down, and about every 10 minutes you’d hear the whirring grind of another drive biting it permanently.

We lost 18 drives that day before they were able to get the power to the heating system just shut down.  Lots of restores the next few days!

TIME interviews one of the stupidest people of the decade.

FIRST PERSON WITH: Taylor Leming, college grad, 21

Created Facebook group I Text Message People While Driving and I Haven’t Crashed Yet!

Alaska and Louisiana just became the latest states to pass laws banning text-messaging behind the wheel. It’s a popular activity: YouTube has videos of young adults texting while driving, and about 600 Facebook members have joined a group called I Text Message People While Driving and I Haven’t Crashed Yet! TIME’s Sarah N. Lynch contacted the group’s founder, Taylor Leming, 21, of Round Hill, Va., who submitted her responses via e-mail:

Why did you start this group?

My friends and I were laughing about how we sometimes text and drive, and how we know it’s dangerous and have nearly rear-ended people because of it. I made the group mainly as a joke among us and a few of our friends. And gradually people invited their friends, and so on.

She’s supposedly a college grad.  And is so damn stupid.  I hope she gets run over by a car driven by one of her dumbass friends that’s text messaging her “i b over u” while driving the short bus they must all be riding.

This persons reason for being so damn greedy that she can’t control herself?

Do you think texting while driving is a problem?

Yes. Unfortunately, people still do it. I still do it. Sometimes it just seems easier to text “Be there in 5″ instead of calling.

What are they teaching kids in college these days that she can’t make the logical assumption that you don’t have to text “be there in 5 unless i rear end someone” and instead can just show up in 5 minutes?  What’s the major malfunction in this persons brain that she can’t call before she leaves, say she’s gonna be there in 30 minutes, and just show up?

I can’t wait for the lawsuit for the first person she hits.  Text messaging or not, I hope the victim read this and sues her for all she’ll ever be worth in her lifetime.

Pretty nice huh

Actor Verne Troyer, best known for playing Dr. Evil’s Mini-Me in the "Austin Powers" film series, has filed a $20 million lawsuit against celebrity Web site TMZ.com for posting portions of a sex tape he made.

Did we really need to know this?  I mean really, this needed to be on the front page of MSNBC.com?

"Because Carter was a lousy president." - John McCain

"That’s like putting lipstick on a pig.  Or a sheep."

"Uhhh.. sheep don’t need lipstick. They’re purty just the way they are."

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint against Maclean’s magazine over a controversial article on the future of Islam, magazine officials said yesterday.

It’s a dismissal rather than a "not guilty" or the like that would put the fascists in Canadian government on notice.

Ehh, I suppose its as good a victory as our Heller decision just was, except for the four socialist judges who fought against Heller.

Ok, I get it.

Thousands of you ask every day for what’s going on with me, not just biting witty commentary on the news of the day.  You want to know what I’m doing and such…

Fine.

Right now, a ham and cheese omelette and coffee.  Leaving in a few minutes to head off to work, where first thing we’re having a meeting with the other side of the company’s messaging group that has been actively but poorly trying to sabotage our project.

You see, our group does engineering.  Which means for a project we’ll take six months to a year, produce 10-20 full documents on requirements, design, implementation plan, QA testing, and so on.  We’ve implemented the solution in a development network, and then in a QA network.  We’re pretty darn good at what we do because we’re so thorough.

The group that thinks they’re equivalent to us in the parent company, well, they’re a buncha sys-admins.  The senior manager missed a meeting the other day because he was doing trouble tickets.  That’s ridiculous, but their entire group is very disorganized and incompetent as engineers.

But they’re blindly trying the power thing with us.  They’re trying to stop our project from going forward that connects the corporate instant messaging systems.  We’ve spent a year testing, configuring, finding bugs, and analyzing everything about this project.  Then when it comes to their cooperation, they’ve been trying to throw out roadblocks left and right.  Problem is, they’re damn amateur about it. 

They want to know if its been tested.  We throw over a QA analysis document showing 50 pages of test cases that have been completed successfully. 

Their own people suggest changes to the design adding a dedicated SIP connector because their current SIP connector has downtime of hours per week.  We change and test the design, and now they let us know that their IM software can’t handle multiple SIP connectors per domain.

I’ve only talked to two people in their entire group that has a clue about technology.  And one is a consultant no longer able to talk on meetings because she’s a sales engineer for their IM vendor.

It’s frustrating because I could design a replacement design for their system in a few weeks that would support the 150,000 people they have using the current system.  That’s what we do.  What they do is use paper clips and masking tape to keep things running as much as they can.  Notice I didn’t say duct tape, they’re not up to that level.

After that meeting though… smooth sailing.  Might leave early and head over to the gun store and browse.  Tomorrow night is a party at Bill’s new condo which will be pretty sweet.  All the happenin’ folks will be there I’m sure.  I’ll have to mow the lawn this weekend but no big deal there.

Next week taking a few extra days off.  No plans, just going to enjoy the time.

So right now it’s 68 degrees, and 9% humidity.  Got a full tank of gas and a full belly.  Time to get off to the day job.

So whaddaya think of the new design?  I’m pretty darn pleased.  The last layout was temporary, meant to fix issues my old layout had with the new Wordpress.

The beta testers like it so far, although I have a little more fine tuning to do.  I’ll work on that today.

Overall though, I’m pretty darn pleased.  Hope everyone likes it.

Look closely at that missing children flyer.  Look at the dates.

Yeah, that’s right.  She disappeared over fifty years ago.  She’d be a grandmother now, instead of the preteen shown in that picture.

That’s unfortunately a very long time for someone to be missing.  But after this long, it’s very unlikely she’s simply missing.  Amazing though how much the facial processing software has come along.

This would be my agenda for my first term:

Abolish the H-1B visa program

Secure our southern border

Deport those that are here illegally

Revise the agricultural guest worker program

Impose tariffs on products from unfair trading partners (like China, whose government controls the currency, not the free market, to our great disadvantage,)

Stop foreign aid to countries that don’t like us anyway

Develop north american energy resources in a responsible manner, Colorado shale oil, Alaskan oil etc

Revisit building nuclear power plants

Build new oil refineries

Eliminate government subsidized corn ethanol programs

Eliminate feel good security programs that don’t actually enhance security like removing shoes and shaking down old ladies in airports

Eliminate the department of homeland security

Repeal the Patriot act, really nothing patriotic about it

Try the prisoners in guantanamo in a court of law or release them

Have the CIA incite a war between China and India (kidding ….)
Punch Ted Kennedy in the nose (kidding … well sort of)

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.

The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.

The Supreme Court finally got some sense.

I love this part:

JUSTICE STEVENS is of course correct, post, at 10, that the right to assemble cannot be exercised alone, but it is still an individual right, and not one conditioned upon membership in some defined “assembly,” as he contends the right to bear arms is conditioned upon membership in a defined militia. And JUSTICE STEVENS is dead wrong to think that the right to petition is “primarily collective in nature.”

And this one:

The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is not limited to military use.

Probably one of the most important lines from this opinion of the court:

When the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

Tons of the sites I like to read are covering this, including Michelle Malkin, the Castle, BlackFive, Ahab, Irons in the Fire.  And of course Kim.  And his lovely sentiment towards that bitch ho, I mean, Feinstein.  And The Razor.  Jawa Report also.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Yes… Deliciously good.  Maybe even better than porn.  I knew the Internet had possibilities!

Flea likes it.

Neptune has 13 known moons, six of which were discovered by Voyager 2. The largest, Triton, orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the direction of the planet’s rotation. Triton is the coldest body yet visited in our solar system—temperatures on its surface are about -391 degrees Fahrenheit (-235 degrees Celsius). Despite this deep freeze, Voyager 2 discovered geysers spewing icy material upward more than five miles (eight kilometers). Triton’s thin atmosphere, also discovered by Voyager, has been seen from Earth several times since, and is growing warmer—although scientists do not yet know why.

Why, that is obviously caused by SUVs here on Earth.  I mean, scientific consensus says it’s so.

“I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.” - Hillary Clinton.