coComments related to bdunbar

When was the last time you

2008-06-18T18:36:28.854+02:00
When was the last time you visited an extremely poor area? A quick trip outside of your suburban bubble, I know you're speaking to Travis but .. you might gain more traction if you stop assuming that everyone who disagrees with your assumptions is an ignorant boob. I'm not going to get in a pissing match about who has more poverty cred - 'cause that's just dumb. But do consider that some people actually know what they're talking about, and you hold no monopoly on the Truth.

If you disapprove of pawn s

2008-06-18T17:57:19.548+02:00
If you disapprove of pawn shops and such, don’t blame the suburbanites (who have no desire for such services, and thus do not have such services nearby On the contrary - pawn shops are excellent places to buy tools and electronics. One nice thing about living in a smaller town is that the pawn shops are just a hop-skip-and-jump away. Plus we don't have projects. On the other hand we do have Section 8 Housing and similar problems as noted in the article.

Dang - thought there was a cle

2008-06-18T17:48:04.676+02:00
Dang - thought there was a clever bit of shell scriptery going on. On the other hand - I should save that for later.

changed the cron jobs to no

2008-06-18T07:23:32.757+02:00
changed the cron jobs to not expect email recipients on the command line, but to instead pull them from the database at run time, I'm trying, and failing, to see how you do that. I've got a shell script in crontab 30 10 2 * * $HOME/bin/foo.sh The last line in foo.sh is uuencode $file $attach | mailx -s "foo report" $to $to is a variable declared earlier in the shell script - my Plexus email address. How do I tell foo.sh to grab a value from a database?

I was on the fence until th

2008-06-17T05:30:22.799+02:00
I was on the fence until the end, I know what happened: we've all watched films that had the same problem - except the end was all happy and 'things worked out' when, really, the plot called for 'gloom' and 'everyone dies'. Turns out what happened was that the studio tested the movie and were horrified - and kludged a happy ending over the director's howls of protest. I'm guessing the studio said something like 'holy moley put a happy ending on this' and the director exercised contractual editorial control and went overboard and slapped on a really dismal ending.

Feh. Avoid! Too late!

2008-06-16T20:10:45.103+02:00
Feh. Avoid! Too late! Actually, I rather liked it. It wasn't great but worth the price of the tickets at the 'two dollar' theater.

I had a conversation like that

2008-06-06T19:59:21.628+02:00
I had a conversation like that two weeks ago. After I moved the trampoline against the side of the house - to mow - Older Monkey was looking at the roof above the trampoline with a gleam in his eye. "No." But Dad .. "No." Reese did it last summer. Reese is his older brother. Reese is 28 and in the Army. "Reese jumped from the roof to the trampoline?" Yes. He went up there to get the ball ... Jesus - let a guy jump out of an airplane for a living and they get all cocky. "When you're a) 18 and b) paying your own medical, then you can do it." Ok. He won't jump. But he also has a pretty long memory and '18' is only 6 years away . . .

Not sure if you’re referrin

2008-06-06T15:00:19.042+02:00
Not sure if you’re referring to me there. No, I"m not. Personal frustration with alt.space enthusiasts leaked over into the comment. that’s not as much fun as cobbling together a piece of crap and issuing a press report calling it a “replicator”. Fair 'nuff.

not through enthusiasts and

2008-06-06T06:01:27.855+02:00
not through enthusiasts and wankers pointing out that if you wired a brick over the top of a tea-kettle, you got something very similar to a steam engine, at just one third the price. I wonder if the wankers are just enthusiasts or are really involved with the actual problem? 'cause one thing I've noticed about really far-out not-quite here engineering is that there is no end of people who have no clue offering advice, useless speculation and napkin diagrams. Then when you point out that there is some actual pick-and-shovel work to be done they mutter darkly about you and organize another conference heavy on Power Point slides and more speculation. I've only casually followed the RepRap thing - I want a cheap self-replicator in my basement as much as anyone - but it seems like the guys actually working on it have a solid grasp of the limitations of the deal. Paraphrasing Sturgeon's Law - Fanboys will give any good idea a bad name.

I was going to say what JJ did

2008-06-05T17:56:15.352+02:00
I was going to say what JJ did - you can't just strap them on and go flying. Hell - walking around with them at night took some getting used to. Operating machinery while goggled would be .. interesting. I have a solution - flares. If the crew needs to land somewhere without lights, fly around the LZ and drop flares. Once the ground is lit, land.

Holy cow - the link is chock-f

2008-06-01T00:18:06.185+02:00
Holy cow - the link is chock-full of spam. And not just spam - the entire page is an ad for a website peddling cut-rate pills.

Who are “these guys” and “t

2008-05-30T02:32:52.543+02:00
Who are “these guys” and “this bunch”? Are you saying there will be a lot of government agents (or some other group of actors?) utilizing newly mobilized cheap labor to perform work cheaply? And that “this bunch” will force people to remain poor? I’m not sure how “they” would accomplish that… I understand that your proposal was off-the cuff. The implication of the proposal minimum working week for everyone but the disabledimplied a great deal more in my own head than was there, after I thought about it for a bit. Nevermind.

I think there should be a m

2008-05-29T21:54:56.736+02:00
I think there should be a minimum working week for everyone but the disabled. Aw, geez. The last thing we need is yet another government program. And this one would not be a bunch of crats in an office doing paperwork in D.C. - these guys would be _everywhere_ and they'd be putting out bids for work their cheap labor pool can perform and have all kinds of power. And this bunch would have no incentive to keep the number of poor lower - the more clients they have the better. Can you say unintended consequences? The solution to a whole bunch of bad government ain't more of the same.

As for your latter points,

2008-05-26T16:59:17.199+02:00
As for your latter points, I have difficulty seeing how your points relate to mine anyway. What makes you think I have a “utopianistic, sunny outlook”? If I did would I really spend my time posting here? I have a generally sunny outlook on life (but brother it's work to maintain it at times) and I enjoy reading/commenting here.

A few days ago I recalled some

2008-05-23T16:25:29.505+02:00
A few days ago I recalled something I liked about the military - they don't let preconceived political notions get in the way of getting the job done. Small biz is like this as well. I've noticed that as the dayjob gets 'bigger' we're getting a little more hidebound in 'how' things get done.

The opening is quite small.

2008-05-14T19:00:11.390+02:00
The opening is quite small. I'm curious - how small is small?

People with dignity and a t

2008-05-11T21:10:55.466+02:00
People with dignity and a taste for privacy eschew the cell phone. And the pager. And the BlackBerry. And those cute lapel-pin communicators from Star Trek. I draw the line at the cell phone. But .. work insists on being able to reach me 24x7, so a cell phone it is. Hey - someone's gotta be there when the mail server goes blam.

Transhumanist entities (in

2008-05-11T08:31:38.813+02:00
Transhumanist entities (in general) have neither handbags nor pockets… Unless you're a transhuman entity who goes in for the 'retro' look.

So, unless that viper is go

2008-05-09T23:03:31.462+02:00
So, unless that viper is going full bore, all the time, after about 3 or 4 fully-auto bursts, it slows to a crawl. Recoilless rifles? I'm thinking like a GyroJet. All the humans, and also the Cylons, use guns. Projectile weapons. Now, if the humans didn’t expect the Cylons to return as humanoids, but instead, Centurions, as they surely did, why do they persist in using conventional weapons? a) There are always people that need killin'. The Colonials may be human but they're not especially nice humans. b) I think it was established that there are special handheld weapons or rounds for toasters.

I was disappointed that the

2008-05-07T01:30:12.323+02:00
I was disappointed that there wasn’t a further explanation of why a prison needed a near 35% staff to prisoner ratio. Divide by four then subtract a small number to find the actual guard / prisoner ratio. Too, they're not all always watching all of the prisoners - at any given time 'a' prisoner would require two guards (or more) for escort off-site, etc. which would exert desirable economic pressure against the state’s appalling power to infringe on human liberty. Haw!

You could have watched Firefly

2008-05-02T15:29:11.083+02:00
You could have watched Firefly and you watched this crap? The idea of sci-fi fans looking down their nose at 'the other show' is .. funny. There is never a subset of freaks and losers that can't find yet a smaller subset of even bigger losers and freaks to sneer at. Bias warning - I'm a freak and a loser: i love BSG and Firefly, equally. But they ain't making no more Firefly and I've already _seen_ that show.

And by the way, you’re real

2008-05-02T01:29:28.561+02:00
And by the way, you’re really NOT gonna cry when you see Tigh’s wife die. She totally deserves it. If you don't cry - or at least weep or at the very least have some strong, tender emotion at the conclusion of that scene - you're a Cylon. Not a skinjob - you're a clanking sub-sentient centurion.

it’s just that like most pr

2008-04-24T23:05:34.929+02:00
it’s just that like most professions requiring skills, probably half or more are filled with bunglers. 10% of any organization will give the rest a bad name; electricians, plumbers and computer programmers. I wonder if residential customers get the short end of the stick here? I've known some really good electricians and they all worked for industrial concerns; places where a mistake costs millions and you don't simply get electrocuted - there is enough power running around to atomize an inept worker.

Ugh - ratty data. I hate ratt

2008-04-24T06:04:52.628+02:00
Ugh - ratty data. I hate ratty data. Not as much as I hate Illinois Nazis but it's up there. See - for about the last five years I was a minor cog rolling ERP out to the company. Every five months we did a new site and every five months during go-live we'd have 'issues' where the data from whatever rattle-trap ERP the site was using would infect JDE and make it act badly. Then we'd have a lively finger-pointing exercise when my label printing app would just .. not .. function right. Every time I'd have to spend X hours proving that my system was 'ok' it was the data from JDE that was making it sick. Every ... stinkin' .. time.

I omitted some details; the la

2008-04-16T14:19:09.341+02:00
I omitted some details; the lawsuit was about how the school was funded. Specifically the union claimed that the law allowing charters forbade a school from enrolling students outside the district. This might not have been clear; one court found for the school, the appeals court found against. The lege got it's act together and changed the law.

I wonder where else we coul

2008-04-16T01:12:45.511+02:00
I wonder where else we could apply this “freelance” approach? The Wisconsin Teacher's union sued a virtual charter a few years ago - shutting that school down was for the children and because the school was in violation of the state laws governing charter schools. Shutting a school down is for the children, don'cha know.

You read through this artic

2008-04-15T16:44:58.513+02:00
You read through this article, and you realize that J K Rowling is fairly incoherent, and can’t keep a single thread straight. I wonder if it's that, or the way the article is written. A skilled reporter could make William F. Buckley look like a drooling moron with selective or out of sequence quoting.

Sorry but it’s true Th

2008-04-14T04:39:52.667+02:00
Sorry but it’s true There are other theories - but over-hunting seems likely. But just because something appears to be related does not mean it is so. And scientists will continue to be wrong about things like that. For thrill's sake I like the asteroid strike theory myself.

Humans appear, big animals

2008-04-14T03:44:30.573+02:00
Humans appear, big animals have mass die off. Phht. I moved to Wisconsin six years ago. Four years ago a mill downtown closed. Clearly the two are related. Can you point to any proof that man caused the mega-fauna extinction in North America?

Dude hogs five seats, berates

2008-04-09T16:50:25.185+02:00
Dude hogs five seats, berates fellow passengers and is, in general, a lout and he claims to be a hero? His long suffering neighbors (you know they are) need to erect a large sign - on their property - pointing to his house and in large comic-ish font it will say ... This way to the Long Island Rail Road 'Hero'

It's a dialect of English - bu

2008-04-04T07:05:33.324+02:00
It's a dialect of English - but I imagine it only has a formal name in some academic paper. My niece writes it with great fluency. She's 13. It's a huge pain in the ass trying to read her email. At least she's trying.

IHT LOOKS LIKE HE GOTT FRAM

2008-04-01T03:06:31.487+02:00
IHT LOOKS LIKE HE GOTT FRAMED I gotta fall back on the dialect of my native land ... Whut in tarnation part of "ah don’t plan t'do it" an' "It was by accident. I’m so'ry" says 'he was framed'? Yer brother admitted t'th' crime. Unner our legal system this hyar trumps enny later plea of 'he was framed' o' 'whoa, ah didn't mean t'tell th' po-lice thet'. Now, stop flapping your gums at your betters and mosey along - the adults are speaking, sonny.

A simple mistake like forge

2008-03-28T05:58:05.599+01:00
A simple mistake like forgetting to put the “Northwest” at the end of a Washington, D.C., address in her appointment schedule Geez Louise - that's not a simple mistake, that's getting the entire frigging address wrong.

That’s just the default for

2008-03-23T02:18:22.055+01:00
That’s just the default for a Solaris web server unless you change it. I just learned something - neato!

On a site where government

2008-03-21T17:41:48.730+01:00
On a site where government agencies advertise bids for private contractors, the ATF advertises Interesting that the government uses the Sun Micro '4S' as the favicon.

Whoop-te-do! I've been called

2008-03-16T21:37:54.993+01:00
Whoop-te-do! I've been called out - on a blog post over a year old - by an anonymous maroon.

Now, if only we can grind u

2008-03-14T19:29:21.182+01:00
Now, if only we can grind up ... Soylent Green is preachy hippies. Yum, yum!

(Loud scoffing) None of that w

2008-03-14T12:59:05.032+01:00
(Loud scoffing) None of that was in the movie of the week about Love Canal - it can't be true!

at the first mention of “VC

2008-02-27T08:02:28.422+01:00
at the first mention of “VC” I was all “What does Vietnam have to do with anything?” The idea of hordes of venture capitalists running around in black pajamas carrying rifles and engaging in human-wave attacks on isolated fire bases manned by plucky entrepreneurs (wearing green berets naturally) tickles me. And of course we'd have Mr. Sulu as a stalwart native officer: "First kill all stinking Cong ... then go home!" Thanks Erica!

beating out comics about cu

2008-02-25T13:58:23.338+01:00
beating out comics about cunnilingus, I missed that one. Someone point me to that so I an be outraged and/or amused!

100g interceptor? I ha

2008-02-22T02:10:56.231+01:00
100g interceptor? I had to look that up - Sprint was a 100g interceptor. Got to 30,000 meters in 15 seconds. (yokel accent) Well gawd-damn! All that and a nuclear warhead.

didn’t we have some level o

2008-02-22T02:06:34.639+01:00
didn’t we have some level of a handle on that with the ABM programs of the 60’s and 70’s? I mean, 100g interceptors and such? Safeguard. Utilized Spartan and Sprint missiles. Poorly funded, reduced by treaty to one ABM site per country. What's the point of that? It was operational for five months and then taken offline in 1975.

This has to be one of the f

2008-02-18T19:23:51.839+01:00
This has to be one of the flakiest programs I’ve read about. It might sound flaky but .. Montessori works. Has worked for a long time now - it's been around since the turn of the last century.

My older monkey attended Monte

2008-02-18T15:37:59.503+01:00
My older monkey attended Montessori at the local parish school, as a pre-K class. He excelled there. Montessori - it's not just for yuppies anymore! Of course .. my recollection of the other Mommies and Daddies was that they were a bunch of yuppies so ymmv. I wouldn't presume to offer it in a public school without a whole lot more studies.

it makes one wonder how muc

2008-02-15T05:14:21.982+01:00
it makes one wonder how much good a gun would do for a person with a limp wrist I knew a few Marines who are gay; not a limp wrist in the bunch. You might want to give your stereotype a few re-thinks.

"Okay, now you have

2008-02-14T17:08:07.959+01:00
"Okay, now you have got to be fucking kidding me." Ya - that's going to be a head scratcher for people a two hundred years from now.

"Six. Times." And then we jus

2008-02-14T06:02:20.295+01:00
"Six. Times." And then we just stopped going.

10 years and you’re out and

2008-02-10T06:49:37.818+01:00
10 years and you’re out and you need to find a job with those people you tortured for 10 years. I get annoyed as anyone by mindless 'crats - heck I worked as a contractor for nearly 3 years for the RTC and then FDIC - I saw my share. But most of them provide good service and do the best job they can.

I'll second what Jennifer said

2008-02-08T00:46:43.962+01:00
I'll second what Jennifer said: I had to look because it was so bizarre. It was there. Not it's not.

Very catty of them. It's like

2008-02-07T20:23:09.487+01:00
Very catty of them. It's like being back in high school.

coComments related to bdunbar

When was the last time you

If you disapprove of pawn s

Dang - thought there was a cle

changed the cron jobs to no

I was on the fence until th

Feh. Avoid! Too late!

I had a conversation like that

Not sure if you’re referrin

not through enthusiasts and

I was going to say what JJ did

Holy cow - the link is chock-f

Who are “these guys” and “t

I think there should be a m

As for your latter points,

A few days ago I recalled some

The opening is quite small.

People with dignity and a t

Transhumanist entities (in

So, unless that viper is go

I was disappointed that the

You could have watched Firefly

And by the way, you’re real

it’s just that like most pr

Ugh - ratty data. I hate ratt

I omitted some details; the la

I wonder where else we coul

You read through this artic

Sorry but it’s true Th

Humans appear, big animals

Dude hogs five seats, berates

It's a dialect of English - bu

IHT LOOKS LIKE HE GOTT FRAM

A simple mistake like forge

That’s just the default for

On a site where government

Whoop-te-do! I've been called

Now, if only we can grind u

(Loud scoffing) None of that w

at the first mention of “VC

beating out comics about cu

100g interceptor? I ha

didn’t we have some level o

This has to be one of the f

My older monkey attended Monte

it makes one wonder how muc

"Okay, now you have

"Six. Times." And then we jus

10 years and you’re out and

I'll second what Jennifer said

Very catty of them. It's like