Shooting from the... hip, right? - 20 June 2007

Again, a nice cool day. Well, except for the parts that we had to spend outside - went to the post office to mail off some more applications. Still looking for the job that will launch my career. Kind of getting aggravating, now, looking all over the place and going “Well, great. Nobody seems to want to hire me.” And with all the bills still happening regularly, you know, it’s just tough to feel like you’re getting ahead.

Got a Pidgin install up and running on Ubuntu (2.0.1, of which 2.0.2 is the latest, but there are no official Ubuntu packages for Pidgin yet, so I had to use a compatible Debian package. I know it’s probably doing bad things, but eventually, it’ll get into the official repositories and then I’ll be back on the official track again. (Edit: As of later tonight, I found a workable 2.02 package to install. Sw33t.) Also, if there’s some way I can configure the thing to make some noise when I get new mail, that would be fantastic - just isn’t in any of the options or plugins that I can see. And I’d want it to only play that sound when there’s the new mail. No other time. The new interface is interesting - less about which protocols are being used, and more about just having one account that has friends in various places. It’s not that hard for me to make the adjustment from, as I’ve basically tried to create the same front that I can for all of my protocols. It may not be as likable for others, though.

Leading with what may amount to a PSA, bradhicks posts another in his How To Avoid Getting (Nearly) Killed series, about how to act around police officers such that you don’t get beaten or otherwise considered hostile to them. This installment covers those points where you are potentially in violation of law - by being contrite and asking the police officers how you can fix the problem, there’s a good chance you won’t get cited for it, nor will you become someone who receives a tasering.

Moving in a different direction from there entirely, These Women Are Supposed to Disgust You. It’s a reimaging of certain scenes with bigger women in an attempt to sell low-fat yogurt. What the advertising people probably don’t get is that there are enough people who would find those images appealing in both sexes that the intended avenue of attack is probably lost. Following on that thought, if Margaret Cho's stockings are sufficient to warrant a fan post, I think that those other women will garner much more. (Those are cool stockings, don’t get me wrong.)

Microsoft pleads for more unpaid beta-testers for Vista - or rather, is trying to get people to upgrade to their latest offering before Service Packs come out. Yet many signals from Microsoft are not of the encouraging sort about Vista. Plus, a lot of services like the cable companies aren’t offering any support for it, either. No real reason to upgrade at all.

Also regarding computers, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States is considering whether laptop hard drives are luggage or extensions of the mind, to render a decision whether those hard drives should still be exempt from the normal requirements for a search warrant when crossing into or out of the United States. One would think that the right to privacy should be considered high on the chain, but the more I live, the more I see lots and lots of exceptions to that, often well-meaning. I wonder whether the Constitution looks more like Swiss cheese than a founding document.

The Army is considering extending tours of duty again, if the current occupant of the Whtie House continues to believe in his "surge". Which will not make troops happy, sane, or increase their chances of returning home alive. A continued surge would make the writers in the following Weekly Standard article happy, as they believe al-Qaeda is set on sapping the will of Americans to fight, resulting in withdrawing from a war they claim can be won. The comparisons are made to Vietnam, which was also apparently a war that could have been won. Living With War Today chronicles the existence of 1915 protest songs to remind us that there’s a strong contingent of people who would prefer that war of any sort not happen.

Despite science’s progressions and hypotheses, recent Gallup poll concludes Americans are really confused about whether to believe in evolution or creation, and that Republicans are more likely to deny evolution than others. Hrm. Not to be flippant, but didn’t we already know this? (Then again, perhaps the point of the poll is to point out that we continue to have these problems.)

Townhall’s Mary Katharine Ham believes it's perfectly okay for Americans with ethnic backgrounds to not want to be champions for those ethnicities. Which I agree with. I may not agree with the idea that English should be adopted as the sole language of the country, learn it or go home, but I’m perfectly fine with Jessica Alba deciding that she’s not a poster child for any particular ethnicity.

The food department offers up Knit Night Cupcakes, which, while looking really cool, probably are more effort than I’d be willing to put in, the possible sale or closing of a Guinness plant, which might be bad, and chopstick-spoon hybrids, which are just silly.

Regarding music, Dave White says your favorite band sucks. No, it doesn’t matter who, if they got popular, they suck. For those aspiring to suckitude, err, stardom, The Captain offers ten commandments for guitarists, which may or may not make sense, or may or may not be the best utterances ever. As always, your mileage and enlightenment may vary.

The Cool Things Department, a frequent contributor to these postings, serves up Jack PC, a computer running Windows CE that is powered off of Ethernet, and can have USB devices, speakers/microphones, and a monitor hooked up to it. If it could access a shared drive and be set to a playlist, that’s your sound system playing from several rooms away, or in every room of your house, without needing much more space than a wall plug. (At least, I assume you could set it so that every speaker had the same song playing.) Additionally, a Funsmith waxes long about an older version of connect-the-dots puzzles.

Last for tonight are Haiku Error Messages. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them around before, but they’re still fun to see. I don’t know if they would preclude any continued frustration about what caused the error, but it would probably make someone stop and think long enough that the immediate response might not go through. Again, possibly good, possibly bad. In all cases, bed is the next thing on my docket, and so I will be utilizing it to the fullest.

Happy Solstice, everyone! - 21 June 2007

We’re officially in summer now, or something, even though the weather has been much more like summer since April and May. It was also hatching day for bladespark , so happy day there. And one of my housemates got interviewed and was offered a job teaching kindergarten in Colorado, so yay and happy there. Another person I know got a job, so there should be one there for me, eventually. I just have to keep looking for it. I may feel like the last person in my circle of friends to get a job, but it will arrive. I still haven’t hit the forty mark yet, so I have to keep trying. And I’ve had interviews, so I’m not just totally repulsive to everyone.

There was a letterboxing adventure today, to pick up two more that I didn’t get around to the last time I went out. The first came pretty easily, and with a little help from a fellow letterboxer from Ohio, whose stamp we collected and gave over, we found the second one. That was quite the neat outing, all told, and didn’t take too long. There was also ice cream afterward. I think that annaonthemoon is going to try her hardest to find the five gallon buckets that the family buys when we get together for herself, because I think she’s an ice cream addict. Addict, I say!

Going onward to the linkies, police arrested several protesting a gay pride event being held in Jerusalem, as the police were doing their best to ensure the event went off without incident. At least one of those arrested had an explosive device that he was planning on planting along the parade route. Admittedly, a pride parade in Jerusalem does seem to be asking for the conservatives of all three religions in the city to show up and protest. But, the police did their job in making sure that the event was able to run smoothly, and for that, bless them.

Okay, I have to admit, this is a fairly novel idea. Even if it looks silly. Christian Condoms, printed with verses and some innuendo. If you’re going to sanctify your sex, maybe these condoms can help keep you safe. Or you can use them as protection against such things as someone possibly paying $1 million U.S. for the first post-jail Paris Hilton interview. Or the parents who would name their child "4real", after the shock they received upon learning of the child's existence. I understand wanting a unique name, but really, I think that idea belongs in the Vault of the Lame. It’d be like calling your kid THX 1183.

Xerox is set to roll out semantic-based searching, trying to guess what you really mean when you type in your query, so as to provide much better results to you. If it succeeds, people will still need librarians to find the things they want - it’ll just be with a potentially more advanced query. Technology is wonderful, but it’s still literal. Once technology can interpret all the complexities and suss out what people really want, then the librarians can wonder whether reference service will drop off.

J.I.V.E. Magazine hits the nail on the head in describing the complex and terrifying reality of Star Wars fans - Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. They love the idea of Star Wars, but they absolutely hate the execution of it. Whatever form of execution it’s come in - movies, video games, books, et cetera. Which, I admit, describes things pretty well. For all its successes, the things that suck pretty hard about the Star Wars franchise really make things loathable.

Politically speaking, the American people think their elected officials suck. There’s still a surprising 26% that approve of the current occupant of the White House (and we’d like to know who they are, ourselves), and 14% for the members of Congress, who are probably supported by many of the same people. Considering how much vitriol has been slung, as well as the likely reason that Democrats are in the majority in the Congress, it’s a wonder both of those numbers still have two digits in them. Of course, with random samples, there’s always the chance that someone will show up who supports the way things are going - after all, it could have been the CEO of a company that benefits from current policy. According to Alternet, that's a lot of people, with as much as the government lets contractors and private corporations do its business.

Certainly not helping his approval any, the current occupant of the White House vetoed another bill that would fund new stem-cell research. The ever-eloquent occupant provided a choice quote about his particular decision.

In the maneuverings of those who wish to be the next occupant of the White House, rumors abound that Colin Powell will be joining Barack Obama's campaign.

Residents at Eastern Michigan University are not particularly happy about the way that the school neglected to tell them that a death reported was a rape and murder, even when they suspected it was so at the beginning. If they didn’t know that there was someone out there, they couldn’t very well take precautions. It’s a wonder there weren’t more women raped or killed in this incident.

Library stuff! First, the good, which is thirteen book/library related hacks from LifeHacker. And then, there’s the bad. What looks to have been a promising summer reading program from the Pickens County Library system in South Carolina has been scrapped because of anonymous phone calls threatening to picket the library. There may have been other threats, but they’re not mentioned in the SLJ article. The program had elements like astrology, palmistry, yoga, tie-dying and Zen garden work. The callers may have all originated from a single Baptist church, but in any case, the program is canned. Jesus' General takes the incident to the logical conclusion, politely asking in his own way for the rest of the ungodly materials to be scrubbed from the collection. The account of this is incredibly infuriating, as much as the course of action taken by the library may be the correct one. Asking pre-schoolers and their parent to walk through a picket of ravenous Baptists would probably not be a smart idea, and the harassment that followed would probably not encourage parents to return. What’s really sad is that all of those activities mentioned on the article would be rather fun to do. Even for people whose parents would then decide never to return because it offended their religious beliefs. I would suspect those parents have already left, however, because the library continues to make Harry Potter available to the kids. Anyway, if you ever wondered whether a small group of dedicated lunatics can change things to suit them, look no further. They can. Now it’s just a matter of deciding which lunatics get to do the influencing.

Neil Gaiman gives all young men, including the shy ones, hope by offering How to Talk to Girls. More of a story than an advice list, it still shows off quite a few ways of getting in well with the people at a party. (I suspect I’d end up having much the same experience that he did.) For something a bit more practical, cmpriest offers up a primer on how to talk to complete strangers - especially if you want information from them. It would serve as a handy guide for people on how to approach their librarians, too.

My Cool Thing to end tonight is a flash video of a "singing" Tesla coil, which provides its own light show to accompany the sound. There may be some recognizable chiptunes in the video provided, if you’re familiar with early Famicom software.

Okay, time to go to bed and sleep some. At least the weather’s been being nice, in the sense of not making it up to the 95/95 sequence yet.