Archive for March, 2009

The Ten Cannots

By | 28 March 2009 | Politics, Quotes | 4 Comments

I happened upon this old truism again while surfing today. And, while I am sure it is probably an unwelcome sentiment in the brainwashed Obama era, it is still reality:

  • You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
  • You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
  • You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
  • You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
  • You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
  • You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
  • You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
  • You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
  • You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
  • And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

The Ten Cannots was published by William J. H. Boetcker back in 1916.

Open for Questions

By | 26 March 2009 | General | No comments

Here’s your chance to have your questions reviewed by white house staffers, and then reworded and cleaned up to serve the narrative of the current administration during an “online town hall” meeting.

At the time I am writing this, 65,107 people have submitted 69,645 questions and cast 2,652,615 votes. Which, I suppose if you think about it means that there are currently around 0.006 votes per person in the United States.

I did my civic duty and review a bunch of questions, voting most of them down because they were either ignorant, or poorly worded versions of other questions. Which perhaps demonstrates the biggest flaw in this system: duplicate content.

Right now, you can only give a thumbs up or down to questions, which is ok, but really what they need is more community moderation of the questions. Based on what I saw, of the 69,645 questions on there, I would guess there are only around 200 unique question, with the rest just variations on the others. They really need to add a way to “bury” questions as duplicate, or at the very least ad the ability to tag questions, to that some kind of structure can be added.

Another interesting note is there there is no “economics” topic to ask questions under.

While I think this is nothing more than lip service, it is still a novel idea, so if you want to check it out, click on the link below:

Open for Questions

Microsoft Hates Web Developers

By | 26 March 2009 | Technology | 3 Comments

I officially squandered and hour of my life updating my xp install under vmware fusion, and fiddling with ie to get 6, 7 and 8 all working along site each other so that I might have the displeasure of testing websites in all fucking three of the browsers.

After getting all the versions of ie installed, I took the new ie8 final out for a test drive. And, low and behold it still sucks, not surprise there though. I love how they don’t care about standards, and just keep introducing more fucking bugs for web developers to deal with. I can’t wait until the next site that I have to add yet another ie version specific stylesheet to. I mean seriously, I have one file for every other browser on the planet, but I expect to have to have three stylessheets just for ie.

I am seriously considering instituting a $1,000 surcharge to make sites ie6 compliant, but it seems absurd to me to devote such a huge portion of project development to debugging issues for a single, very obsolete, browser. Am I wrong? In the not too distant future I plan on modifying this site so that ie6 users are sent to a static page with download links to modern browsers, they will not longer be able to get to the actual blog and send me annoying messages about rendering quirks.

If you are viewing this post in internet explorer: what the fuck? Get with the program, and drop that piece of shit.

I could site here and rant about how awful internet explorer is, and how it takes years off my life, but it is getting late and I really should be sleeping, not venting. But, I won’t let that stop you from venting.

Anyone reading this is more than welcome to post a comment expressing their hatred for internet explorer. Any version is fair game, as they all suck.

Get Dropbox: Sweet Tool, or Shameless Plug?

By | 24 March 2009 | General | 2 Comments

dropbox_logoThis post is targeted at my readers that have not yet heard about Dropbox. However, anyone is welcome to read it. ;-)

I first heard about dropbox when I reading a newsletter from the makers of 1password. They discontinued their my1password.com site that I was using to sync my passwords across multiple users. Luckily they changed the way keychain was done so you could just copy the files and it would work on any computer. In their write they described how to setup dropbox so that the keychain would be automatically backed up, and synced across multiple machines. Intrigue, I set it up, and not only did it work, but it was quick and easy, and more importantly free.

Since then I have been adding a variety of resources to the magical “dropbox” folder on my computers. I have found that it is quite handy to have my task lists, cheat sheets, and programming resources shared across all the machines I use. And, another nice thing is that it works not only on a mac, but in windows and linux. So, I am easily able to sync the same set of core files across my vista, osx, and ubuntu machines without even thinking about it. Although, I still carry around my trusty 16gb flash drive for larger file transfers between the machines. And, for those of your wondering why I use all three main os’, well that is a story for another day.

Let me take a second to describe how it works:

  • Setup an account at getdropbox.com
  • Download the installer for whatever OS you’re using
  • Install dropbox
  • Drag files you want to sync into your new “dropbox” folder
  • Kick back and drink some Schlitz Malt Liquor, you’re done (and for the minors, a glass of warm milk)

    So, while that is all well and good, lets get to the reason that I am even writing this post in the first place.

    For some reason the dropbox peple are running a customer drive, where they are offering existing customers bonus space when their referrals are converted into new users. By default you get 2gb of space for free with the free package. But, during this promotion you get an additiona 256mb of space per converted referal. This bonus would allow you to get a total of 5gb for free. And, while I am currently only using 183mb of my 2gb, I would not at all mind having an additional 3gb to play with. ;-)

    So, if you have already, please go ahead and sign up now!

    WoW Panhandling

    By | 7 March 2009 | General | 11 Comments

    Hobo MageAt one of the most unusual times possible, vanberge decided to pick up WoW again. And, in an effort to get the rest of us going again he started a big email thread on the subject. Normally this would not have been the big a deal, but thing have gone rather sour on the old server we used to play on.

    Apparently, the person that got us all playing in the first place (who will remain nameless) jumped servers while the rest of us weren’t playing. So, of course vanberge followed suit when he started playing again.

    Reluctantly, I accepted vanberge’s scroll of resurrection to get a 10 day pass. And then, after spending hours installing wow again, and downloading countless updates I was finally able to log into the server.

    When I logged in I found myself in the middle of no where, and in the middle of ten different quests. And, to make matters worse, it appears my inactivity got me booted from the guild. Thus, my poor avatar finds him self broke, lost and without a friend or guildmate on the entire server!

    I am willing to put forth the $15 to pay for another month of the game, but I am not willing to put up the $25 to transfer my character to another server. Damn you Blizzard and your blackmail.

    As a result of the above, I need to raise money to transfer my character, but have no desire to shell out my own coin. But, I am will to accept donations on behalf of my bewildered avatar so that he may once again be reunited with ex-consultants.

    All those that feel my pain, click on the link below. Not donation is too large. :wink:

    UPDATE: Thanks to the generocity of vanberge and chouse (and to a lesser extent, vanlandw) I now have enough funding to transfer my character to the “Earthen Ring” or so other “ER” abbreviated realm.