Merry Christmas!

Why I'm up at this hour working on reinstalling and restoring 1.9 gig of files to a friends laptop I'm not really sure. Particularly since I have to be up tomorrow for usual Christmas morning and church, too. It's the spirit of Christmas, I guess.

And last night, of course, I was up till 3:00 (am) getting schroeder fully upgraded. He's been needing a good apt-get dist-upgrade for a while, not having had the chance since early May. But, of course, I had to pick a slow day for RoadRunner(tm) and had to do other stuff all afternoon, so the morning was spent watching him download (1.5 gig of packages to DL - at 30-80kB/s) and the late evening and wee hours babysitting the rest of the process. Fun fun fun.

Aside from that, however, this week has been remarkably relaxing and productive. Cleaned out my pack and filed (most of) my junk from this semester, hacked up an A/V connector and tested my $15 Nintendo 64 (it works! Goodwill rocks), got my Flickr thing going, spent a bunch of time getting acquainted with LibraryThing, fixed the powersupply for my Boss multieffects pedal (broken wire), reassembled a friend's Digitech RP-2000 and fixed the powersupply for that (two broken wires), whacked together a dual head linux config for my cousin, updated schroeder, completely dissasembled the old iMac (dead analog board, but PS & mobo still fine - build a linux firewall/router box, I think), slept in a lot, and did a whole lot of research on website pre-processing tools. I think I'm going with tt2site for now, I just have to figure it all out and migrate NateNet over. More fun for the Holidays. No school until January 17th, though, so plenty of time to work on Things In General(tm), read and see if I can help Dad get more of the basement organized. I need more boxes to put stuff in...

After the Holidays. I've got a solid week of goofing off to do with family, the other stuff can wait until post-New Years.

Killing Father Time

I'm learning (or at least realizing) just how time-driven our society/my life is, and I hate it.

In the three weeks I spent at Tauernhof's Upward Bound program this past summer, we weren't allowed watches while we were out on tour. It was awesome. Our leaders took care of waking us up and keeping us on schedule. We got up when someone yelled "Rise and shine! Brekky in half an hour!", we didn't know how many hours of sleep we got and didn't worry about it. Minutes were no longer important. Everything was somewhat flexible.

Now in contrast, these last two weeks of school would be fairly normal except that my church's annual Dessert Theatre production is next week - so, added on to the normal routine, I have to finish the lighting before this weekend and we have four performances next week. The last two weeks of school. Since my school schedule is pretty much a fourty-hour week, I usually do a bunch of homework on weekends. Now I have setup, dress rehearsals, and performances on weekends, on top of the usual midweek activites that take up a couple evenings.

I recalled this summer last week while putting together a robot during Lab - I happen to enjoy working on stuff like that and suddenly realized that I had been happily working on Olaf for an hour and a half (say that five times fast), oblivious to the rest of the world. That's when I realized I don't like time. Those three weeks with I spent mostly time independent and it was the proverbial breath of fresh air. (And I'm sure being in the Austrian Alps didn't have anything at all to do with it. ;) Regardless of where I am, I don't want to have to care so much about scheduling and time management and making sure I have enough time to do all my homework for PreCal. (And that's the kicker - I'm slightly behind and it's not because I don't understand the math. It just takes so much time to crank through all the problems.)

This is why I hate time: it waits for no-one, we can't kill it, all we can do is waste it (to borrow the cliches). But at the same time if we try to pack as much as possible into our minutes, we end up wasting ourselves instead. Which is really better?

Going for the Polls

We return for a special broadcast on the weirdness of CNN. On the front page today is a poll with the blaring healine: Most doubt Bush has plan for Iraq victory.

Initial reaction: then what in tarnation is this?

After reading the actual poll article, we find some interesting things.

(CNN) -- As President Bush launched a new effort Wednesday to gain public support for the Iraq war, a new poll found most Americans do not believe he has a plan that will achieve victory.

But the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday night also found nearly six in 10 Americans said U.S. troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq until certain goals are achieved.

Just 35 percent wanted to set a specific timetable for their exit, as some critics of the war have suggested.

White House officials unveiled a 35-page plan Wednesday to achieve success in Iraq, and Bush used a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, to tout what he said was progress in getting Iraqi security forces in place to protect their own country. (Full story link)

The poll conducted Wednesday does not directly reflect how Americans are reacting to Bush's speech, because only 10 percent of the 606 adult Americans polled had seen it live and two-thirds had not even heard or read news coverage about it.

(...)

Among poll respondents, 55 percent said they did not believe Bush has a plan that will achieve victory for the United States in Iraq; 41 percent thought he did.

Bold text mine. Now, we would like to point out that the percentage of people polled who think that Bush has a plan for vicory (41%) is higher than the percentage (33%, derived from the 2/3rds figure above) who have heard coverage of President Bush's speech Wednesday.

How can this be? Assuming that those who have not heard any news coverage (66%, the 2/3rds figure above) also have not heard of of the plan (released Wednesday), I personally would count those poll numbers to be out of date.

Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush

...So early in the morning. Maybe we'll take up blogging again. Maybe we'll abandon it again after a couple months...we'll see. I have this love/hate thing with blogs. It goes in cycles.

Anyway, my summer is pretty much over, and we now head full tilt back into the school year. I'm looking forward to getting into micros, I wanna learn how to program stuff. My current goal is to have a working parport DMX interface by Christmas. Not designed from scratch, obviously (so much work that someone else has already done for you), but still built and programmed. My other goal is to get my corner of the basement more organized, with more shelving and workspace, so I actually have space to set up shop with room to work and a computer or two. (Or six, we'll see what happens there, as well.)

And, of course, this blog will be either the vent to the world or a silence resembling granite. It's probably about as interesting to the rest of the world either way, so I won't sweat it. The most interesting blogs to read are those of people you know.

The Super-Hero In All Of Us

One never knows what the evenings rounds may turn up. Now, thanks to this wonderful quiz (by way of Michelle Malkin), we may all put to rest those nagging fears about which of The Incredibles characters we are.

What? You do not suffer from these sorts of feelings?

Come to think of it, neither did I until I took the quiz. Apparently I'm Edna...which probably raises more questions than it answers.

Non-Frozen Precipitation

Awefully novel concept, after this winter. There are even bare patches in the back yard - puddles now, but still devoid of snow.

Anyhow, back from break and getting back in the swing of things after Easter. Six weeks 'till the end of school! That doesn't seem possible, but it is. It's really amazing how much one can not do over break, considering the time. In the course of last week, despite all good intentions, I managed to not do Physics homework, not do Algebra homework, and not do any reading for Circuits class. The biggest accomplishment of the week consisted of putting up bookshelves in my room, resulting in more organization and an increase in available floor real-estate. I also stayed up late and generally threw my schedule out the window. Profitable time, what. And, of course, I was so busy I had absolutely no time to post here.

And now, more later. Need to catch up on some things.

Spring Is Coming!

Really. I saw another Robin at church yesterday. And now I'm heading for bed so I can get up at five tomorrow morning and go shovel/snow-blow a foot+ of nice fresh white stuff down at church. Awesome, I tell ya. Absolutely awesome. Spent a couple-three hours outside this afternoon tunneling with siblings, and probably do some more tomorrow. Best banks we've had since we moved, I think - they're all higher than the snow-plane of the yard, which is around three feet or so. If only I had a digital camera, I'd be photoblogging this...

Now on a completely random different topic, these things have got to be the best flower pots I've seen. (No! I'm not thinking of spring! Or I wasn't...)

On to bed, then. A great prospect of a morning awaits. Really too bad about the lack of camera, it is.

The Manalo I Have Discovered

Stickman says, not of this world, the Manalo is. For the wearing of the shoes, Manalo has advice. The world of the shoes is the Manalo's. But the Manalo does not talk all about the shoes, also he talks about the Poncho and the warmers of the legs and the song and dance. (And the other fashion advice, of course.)

The Manalo, he is possessing of the super fantastic sense of humour. Stickman says, the Stickman enjoys the Manalo. But the Manalo, does he have the Force?

Those Darned Feather Quilts

They must be needing some really good shakings this year. Yet another six-eight inches of snow, complete with high winds and cold temperatures. And busy days. It would have to dump last night, and of course school wasn't canceled today.

The roads were pretty horrendous, as well. Before the cold front came in last night it rained for a while and then when the cold front got here, it froze. Which made things really slick. Like you could skate on Rt. 25 through Gorham kind of slick, especially once the morning rush had polished it. In fact, some people skated their cars off the road. The best way to stop was, literally, to steer into the shoulder and do your deceleration there because the snow had that much more traction than the ice did.

But spring is coming, folks! I saw three Robins at school this morning. Welcome to March in Maine.

After that wonderful drive in, I was one of five guys who showed up for class (out of about fourty). And some of those guys live in the dorms, for pete's sake. Naturally, those of us who were there don't.

Indeed, I truly admire the dedication of modern college students. Idiots. Don't complain about your grades when you aren't there 1/3rd of the time.

I Have A Lot Of Respect For Those People

Real bloggers are to be admired. I'm talking about people who blog full time, or even outside and around a day job and still crank out the commentary by the bucket. I cant really do that...besides having less to say on a great many given subjects, I generally just don't have the time. Too much to do. School work to do, computers to work on, side projects, and a few other things. At the moment that includes resurrecting one of the old IBM towers for a windows box. (Currently an eMachine is filling that position, but it's fan is dying and sounds horrible.) And once I've got a quiet windows machine back, I probably need to do a thorough overhaul of my area of the basement. It's better than it was a couple weeks ago (I actually have room to work on things), but could use a little more work (since I only have room to work on one thing at a time).

Yeah, so anyway, I am a busy person. But not so busy I can't kill time between classes at school surfing around and digging up clock hacks. Rather ingeneous, putting one in a G5 like that. Not, perhaps, the most tactful of mods, but interesting nonetheless. And I seem to be developing this thing for interesting clocks, but more on that later. Time to quit rambling and do something else.

School, Spam, School & Spam, Eggs, School, and Spam...

In short, little time. Normal homework and such, and a couple other side projects that are occupying a couple-three extra hours per week at this point. I haven't had time to read my bloglist this week, let alone post and do my own stuff. I did, however, actually spend some quality time away from my computer (!) yesterday, puttering at my lair in the basement. It's a mess. As in boxes of scrounged circuit boards, miscellaneous lamps and parts, a couple pairs of unused speakers, two computers (semi-disassembled) and a monitor on my shelf over all the boxes, three more computers providing more shelf space in half the walkway to my workbench, two more monitors on the file cabinet, four more computers and misc cases/drivebays on the old bureu (which houses yet more junk), and odd piles of stuff, like keyboards, mice, cables, useful rubber, etc. And, behind the shelving unit, a pile of stuff heaped over the old school desk, consisting of an old mac monitor, a box of Cat-5 pieces I pulled out of the dumpster at school, a couple old tape decks, more boxes of wire, circuit boards and other junk, and who knows what other junk. I can't remember. All in the space of ten feet square. And to think, it's not as cluttered as it was yesterday morning.

Maybe it will get even better tomorrow, after homework and (possibly) shoveling (if it snows). And I need to finish up that graphics project I'm working on (which can't be divulged publicly quite yet...). Oh yeah, and I also need to test those VCRs, too.

Yep, Anyone Can Be A Journalist

There's a Washington Post article today (by Howard Kurtz) about the recent job changes of certain people in the mainstream media due to bloggers. This paragraph caught my attention:

In the case of Jordan, a 23-year CNN veteran, it was a single online posting by technology executive Rony Abovitz, after Jordan's ill-fated comments at an off-the-record forum Jan. 27 in Davos, Switzerland, that led to his downfall. The lesson, say media analysts: In the digital age, anyone can be a journalist.

You know, for once the 'media analysts' are right: apparently anyone can be a journalist. So, sign up today! The New Rules of Reporting are easier than ever and now require even fewer tedious fact-checking procedures! You, too, can achieve high (or low) places.

And remember, you heard this from a Media Midget.

Death Of A Writer

Arthur Miller died last night - I probably wouldn't take much notice except that I had Death Of A Salesman in Lit. class last semester. I'm also sort of ashamed to say that Death Of A Salesman is the only one of Miller's works that I'm at all familiar with. It is, however, something that I think everyone should see and think about.

Articles at CNN, Reuters, the BBC, and ABC News, which all do a much better job of summing up his life than I. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to add some more of his stuff to my reading list.

Black Bears And Shoe Strings

The two aren't really related, of course, except that one may find both a humorous. Depending on your sense of humor. Black bears and the hunting thereof are, apparently, a hot topic in western Maryland. From an article in the Washington Times:

A bill introduced yesterday would save the black bears of Western Maryland — by spreading them into every county of the state. House Minority Leader George C. Edwards of Garrett County offered the modest proposal in part to highlight differences between rural and suburban parts of the state.

Choice quote:

"If these people want to tell us we have to live with the bears, they should be willing to accept the bears," the Republican lawmaker said. "They can bring their charcoal grills and their bird feeders in every night. Fair is fair."

Why is it that people who live in cities and urban areas usually have a problem with controlling wildlife population? It's not like they would know much about it, generally speaking.

Now, on to other things. If you've ever wondered exactly how many ways there are to lace a shoe, you need to take a trip over to Ian's Shoelace Site. Anything you could ever want to know about lacing and tying shoes. Seriously. (And his Ian Knot really is fast, once you get the hang of it.) Deffinitely one for my bookmarks.

And In This Corner Of The Ring....

I heard earlier today that Terry Gross was going to be interviewing Sen. Barbara Boxer on Fresh Air this evening, and I thought it might be interesting. I wasn't dissapointed - Sen. Boxer accused conservatives of employing "Leninist Strategies". Listen for yourself.

Sen. Boxer cited Lenin's assertion that in order to defeat the opposing party one must keep the older folks happy and made a parallel to a statement of President Bush's in the State of the Union Address:

"I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way."

What I fail to understand is how caring for our aging citizens amounts to Leninism. I assume, however that what Sen. Boxer did *not* mean was that Democrats don't care about the aging percentage of the populace.

(Oh, and brownie points for slamming Social Security Reform by making the Conservative=Communist connection.)

Weathery White Stuff And No School

No school because of the weathery white stuff, even. Who'd a thunk? The whole day off today instead of closing the campus at two like they have every other time. I guess they figured the forecast was bad enough to warrent closing, and it looks like they were right.


(Image from the National Weather Service.)

It's really quite nice to have the day off, since I stayed up too late again last night (for no reason, at all - stupid) and really need to catch up on a couple hours of sleep prior to any more early classes. I can also catch up on a small bit of physics stuff I didn't get done in lab yesterday.

Speaking of white stuff, that's a lot of popcorn.

School, School, More School, And Lack Of Sleep

Talk about slacking off. I seem to go in cycles where I keep up with this blog and then I don't, and then I do, then I don't. Arg. Too much going on.

Well, sort of. I finally got my machine in for a dist-upgrade Friday so I've been tweaking some new stuff and generally spending way too much time playing with the system. Discovering new things, like RSS feed reader to keep up with the news and whatnot, and I don't remember what else. Oh, compiling a new kernel, getting jackd running for audio stuff, etc. Not playing with Gimp 2.2 as much as I'd like. Gah.

Anyway, time for Physics class. Then lab untill five. Yahoo.

Maine Is In The Eastern Time Zone.....Right?

For now, anyway. I heard a blurb on Maine Things Considered the other day and finally got around to posting this. Rep. Kevin Glynn (R-South Portland) is proposing a bill to move Maine from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone, citing increased economic and health benefits. (That's if I remember the quote from Maine Things Considered correctly. I also couldn't seem find a copy of the bill text, it's LR-518. Link to Kennebec Journal article.)

It would seem to me that changing time zones would cause more economic havoc than good. Sure, having an extra hour of daylight would be good for the Ski Companies and after-school activities, but being an hour different from the rest of the Eastern Seaboard could mess up commerce in general, travel, tourism, etc. Whatever.

I'm not sure what it would do for general health, either. Let people be out and about later, maybe. And keep kids a little safer in (and allow more time for) after-school activities. But on the other hand, right now the sun is just up when elementary school kids are out waiting for the bus at 7.30 or so. However, if we move an hour ahead, it will be as light at 7.30 as it is now at 6.30, which is not very.

I just don't really get it. The bill to make Moxie our state drink, that's one thing - but being the only state on Atlantic Time? (Ok - so it's not as weird as Maine Time.) Bragging rights, that's what we get. Why can't we just brag about Moxie?

The Pyrotechnic Qualities Of Capacitors

Ok kiddies, you know how your circuits lab instructor always said to make sure to put your electrolytic capacitors in the right way around so they don't pop? Well, if you connect a ~25Vdc cap to 140VAC (RMS) and hold the 15-amp breaker closed so it doesn't trip, the capacitor will not only pop, it will blow up.

Completely.

There is a loud bang (which naturally brings your instructor running, since you wouldn't think of doing this sort of thing when he's actually in the room), a cloud of white smoke (which smells really nice), and drifting fuzz from the stuff inside the cap. Probably some shrapnel, too, but I didn't actually see any of that. One should also note that your instructor will probably be rather put out, due to safety concerns and destruction of school property, however small and cheap the property.

Names have been withheld to protect the very guilty. And no, I didn't do it, although now I know why you shouldn't. And now I can say that yes, I have seen a capacitor blow up.

Happy Inauguration

I missed the inauguration fairly completely today, I was at lunch and the dining hall was too noisy to make watching it interesting. It doesn't have the same sort of appeal as a silent film, for some reason - but we digress. Here's to hoping Mr. Bush will do even better than he did with his first term. The BBC has an interesting take on it, with which I'm apt to agree, for the most part.

But tell me - is this just a little scary, or isn't it? Is there a good reason for the IAC to have this type of information? Is there a reason _anyone_ should have this information right now, aside from the law enforcement? The IAC?!? And then, from another corner, we have this tidbit about ABC, courtesy of Captain Ed.

Now, on a more positive note, it's a beautiful day, if still cold and (down here at school) windy. Three inces of fresh, white snowfall nicely augments the general sunnyness and blue skies.

Hurrah For The Media

...Those denizens of fine, unbiased reporting and comprehensive coverage. I'm growing increasingly disgusted about the state of this nation's news establishments, especially after reading this essay by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan. I'm going to go vent by doing some Math homework, since anything I try to say at this moment will probably come out rather incoherently and who knows what else.

There's also an interesting new bit about the CBS memos over at RatherBiased.com on yet more evidence that the memos are fake. (For more info and background, which I am not going to elaborate on here, one would do well to take a look at the above site, Rathergate.com, Little Green Footballs, and probably a few others. Also an interesting post on Powerline about some details in the whole memo thing that are still blowing in the wind.)

A Little Tweak Here, A Little Tweak There...

Ok, so an entirely new template isn't exactly a little tweak, but not this little corner of the web is a little prettier. I'll also be bonking around on the plumbing in the next couple weeks to add a links sidebar and maybe other stuff, I haven't figured it all out yet. So stay tuned.

In other news, I spent way too much time last night on the High Altitude Glider Project (as linked to from Hackaday) instead of doing something productive. What could be cooler than dropping a glider from a weather balloon at 76,000 feet? Well, besides the plane having a computer & GPS on board for autopilot, cameras, other fun sensors, and the ability for manual control and monitoring/tracking from a laptop on the ground via a packet radio.

Weeee're Back! And Not Much Better Than Usual!

I _am_ going to try to post and keep this blog going, partly because I don't have any classes this semester which require writing in any shape or form other than class notes and physics/math equations. As such, this sort of thing is a good way to keep my writing skills in shape a little.

I'm also going to be keeping up a little more on the world in general, after getting in the habit for government class last semester and thinking awareness of current events and such to be a Good Thing In General. And, in writing about stuff like that, we excercise critical thinking and other such useful things.

And in addition to those noble and lofty aspirations, We, The Midget, will probably come at things from a natural point of view: techie. That is to say, as an EE student (well, ET (Electronics Technology), technically, for the Associates degree, but post that on to USM for rest of the EE degree...) and Mac/Linux geek, things in those fields will probably crop up here with some frequency. I'm trying to give this blog some semblance of purpose in order to make it more readable and interesting and...purposeful. Because however nice the thought of a genuine glimpse of someone else's life is, it 1) often isn't really an accurate portrayal, due to factors of subjectivity and such, and 2) does not really hold one's attention for long, regardless of whether you are the reader or the writer. Regurgitating a summary of your life onto the screen gets old pretty quickly, since you *have* just lived it, after all.

Anyhow. Since we've got all that out of the way, let's link to an interesting bit I saw on Whizbang earlier today on this article in the LA Times. Quite interesting, really. And, of course, the Slashdot discussion of this article has some insightful comments.