The Daily Diversion Archive For September, 2002

Thursday, September 5, 2002

What's cool?

Coverage of rally races on Speed, off-leash dog parks and drive-in movies.

What sucks?

Summer colds, humidity and guys with the last name of Chatty who try to get on airplanes with guns in their carry-on bags.

We went to a drive-in movie on Sunday night. We saw Scooby Doo and XXX. Both movies were far better than I expected. This isn't saying that they were high cultural entertainment. They were very good and were a great way to kill 4 hours in our car. Scooby Doo was fun and didn't suck. That's actually high praise considering there was at least a hundred ways to really screw up handling that set of characters. Rowan Atkinson was a surprise as well.

XXX was a ton of fun, and Vin Diesel was far better than I expected he would be. The movie was a bit on the corny side, and the end was a bit too long, but all in all, this kicks ass on a lot of the Ahhnold movies I've seen. It's kind of a cross between a Bond film, and and X-Games show with a touch of Bill the Galactic Hero thrown in for humor. It was a lot of fun and I'm waiting for the first Vin Diesel/Jackie Chan film. That would rock.

Monday September 9, 2002

Approximately one year ago, a group of Nihilists, motivated by the promise of a heavenly brothel, shaved the hair off their bodies and proceeded to use passenger airliners as weapons to destroy two of the tallest buildings in the world. As a team they killed more than 3,000 people, including their dumbass selves.

They cut the hair off their bodies to get ready for their "72 black-eyed virgins" in their twisted version of paradise. I hope the revisionists are right. I hope what they got was 72 white raisins. Actually, I'm pretty sure I know what they got. They got a one-way ticket to see Satan, live and in person. If there is an afterlife, these are 20 of the best examples of who ought to get the worst treatment ever.

I call them Nihilists, because that's what they were. They didn't want to forward the cause of Islam or Islamofascisim. No, they were actually hot on the trail of getting laid. They didn't seem to like women here on this earth, so they wanted the perfect woman that only paradise can supply in any quantity. These men hated themselves, hated the world and wanted to change it forever. What they wanted was to destroy themselves and thereby destroy the world. They wanted the world they left behind to suffer the consequences of their own actions. They wanted destruction.

Mikhail Bakunin the infamous bomb-tossing anarchist argued that destruction was a creative energy. This is true in the sense that destroying something will often allow something else to grow in its place. However, this was not the motivation of the Nihilist Islamakazes. All they wanted was relief. Sweet relief knowing they died trying to forward some silly cause, sweet relief knowing they would be richly rewarded in the afterlife, and most of all, sweet relief in destroying themselves.

The purpose of all this blather is to posit that these guys were losers. There's no other way to describe them. They worked hard at being losers. I'd bet that if they tossed half the energy they dissipated towards their particularly rancid form of Islamism towards actually trying to fly and LAND a plane, they might all be flying planes for money now.

I'm sad. This year has been full of so many changes for my wife and I, but it seems that our biggest achievements have been tainted somewhat by what happened on 9/11. We sold our house, bought a new one, had a fence built, bought 2 cars, and did a bunch of stuff, but not a single day goes by where I don't think about 9/11, see something on TV on 9/11 or read about 9/11 on some blog. To a certain extent I go looking for this stuff. Reading what and who I do, I tend to be read people who are concerned about this topic. I could just shut down and shut off the computer and go outside and have a life, but that's not me and I don't want to.

I'm sad. I'm sad that the Islamic world has less interest in pulling itself out of the dark ages than it does in blaming the West or Israel for their current predicament. Yes, yes, I've read a lot on the subject. I understand that their predicament has a lot to do with colonialism and other historical factors. The real kicker is, they were top dog once upon a time. They seem to have regressed in the past 200 years or so. I do not want to hear about colonialism, neocolonialism, the Crusades, or any other stuff that may or may not have contributed to the current state of things that didn't happen within the last 50 years. We can do nothing about people who have come before us. We play with the cards we're dealt. If we get a rotten hand, we try to make it better. Some folks will discard a card that's preventing them from having a winning hand. Others, seem to want to re-write the rule book so their rotten hand is the winner.

To the Islamofascists: It ain't gonna happen. You don't set the rules to this game and cheating is going to do more to hurt you than it will to hurt us. On 9/11, the Islamofascists cheated. They used a tool of prosperity, the very thing that makes our world a smaller and more interdependent place as a weapon. They hijacked four passenger jet airliners, these marvels of modern technology, and used them as flying bombs in a futile effort to prove what? That an open society is vulnerable to those who cheat? That if we don't watch every last person who believes in Islam like a hawk, hundreds of innocent people are again going to perish? That Osama bin Shitheel is a rich, delusional kook who gets off on killing innocents in the name of his God?

This sort of thing won't happen again. It's not because the screening procedures are so much better. We still have airport guards out at MSP that failed out of school bus training. It's not because there's armor plated cockpit doors on all airliners. It's because the people on any given hijacked flight won't stand for this kind of crap anymore. Airline passengers now know that they probably face certain death if they're passive and only face possible death if they rush the hijackers, throw stuff at them and stop the hijacking. A revolver only holds 6 shots. There might be a hundred people on a flight. People faced with a certain bad outcome will try to avoid it. That's all.

I'm sad. All those dead office workers. Most showed up for work as usual that day. They didn't ask to be killed. Not many of them would have considered just showing up for work an act of war. They were attacked not for who they were and not for what they did. They died because they worked in an icon of the prosperous west. Osama bin Jerkwad and his ilk did the same thing in 9/11 as the bully in the playground does to a bunch of kids playing with a special toy. They took it and broke it so that no-one could ever use it again. Why? Perhaps he felt deprived of something in his life. It's not that we should feel sorry for him. Let us not forget that he was born into one of the richest families in the world. He probably never cashed a paycheck in his life. But beyond all this, perhaps he felt deprived of something. Perhaps he felt like a 2nd class citizen growing up in Saudi Arabia. 2nd class compared with the rest of the world. I'm not a shrink, but perhaps this was some kind of puerile lashing out against something that was nice to wreck it for the rest of the world. "Look at me, I took a dump on Lower Manhattan! Aren't I cool?" No, you're most certainly not.

I'm sad. All those dead police officers and firefighters. They were just doing their job. Somehow, some of the most gut wrenching photos of the aftermath of 9/11 were the ones of the wrecked firetrucks, ambulances and police cars. You just know people died in and around these vehicles because people need to be near these vehicles to make them work. A destroyed fire truck just seems like a desecration.

I'm sad. I'm going to mourn the dead on 9/11 in my own way. I'm not going to stop using technology, I'm not going to go to church, I'm not going to go to some special ceremony. I'm going to sit here, think about what happened that day and get mad. I'm going to get red-hot hoppin' mad. I'll be sad because there really isn't anything I can do except for what I'm doing now.

Finally for today, I went back into my archives to see what I wrote before and after September 11, 2001. I was pretty mad. I wasn't eloquent. It is what it is. Go have a look.

Thursday September 12, 2002

I got to play with XP today. It was an exceptionally fast machine and boy did it rip. It almost made me want to put it on my main machine at home. Almost.

9/11 Came and went and at the time I'm writing this, it was uneventful in catastrophes. Apparently, a few odd ducks decided that an airliner's bathroom at 35 thousand feet was an appropriate place to shave off all their body hair, but that plane landed and those 4 morons are now safely tucked away behind bars. Kooks.

I couldn't handle all the stuff about 9/11. I already feel terrible for the families of the people who died. Hearing bagpipes play Amazing Grace, hearing church bells toll, hearing the names listed off one by one and hearing about all the other stuff going on today made me just want to go back to bed. Failing that, I turned off the radio and TV and just chilled with my buddy, the Internet.

I also played Joe BSD today. I was in a bad way with this very webserver. Something was eating up all the space on the / partition. Naturally, it was my own damn fault. I had put something that grew (log files) where it should not have been (on the small / partition) and then had to move it when it got too big. BSD is graceful in tolerating this kind of crap. I had overloaded the / partition by 7Mb of data by the time I figured it out. If this had been any other OS I use regularly, this machine would not be serving you this file. However, FreeBSD is very tolerant of this and didn't fail. I moved the offending files, redirected the things that needed redirecting and all is presently well.

Hooray for me.

So I'm thinking about getting a Mac. Not anything powerful or new or anything. I just want to try NT on one. After I'm through playing with it, I can set it up for Sarah to use as her computer her at the house so she doesn't have to drag her laptop home every night. Not that it's a big deal to bring it home. It's pretty light and she's all set up with wireless here so that it is the most portable fun machine around. She would just like the option to not have to bring it home every night.

I hear that NT rips on RISC processors. If anyone has done this already, drop me a line. I'd like to hear about it.

On the way home last night, I saw a car about a block from our house with all of its windows bashed out. Whoever did this to this relatively new Honda sedan really didn't mean for it to be taken as an accident. Every piece of glass on the car had what looked to be arm or crow-bar holes in it. It was not nice to see. I really did not want to see this a block from the house. As sucky as seeing this was, I still fear not because I don't drive an imported car and I drive a car that just isn't stolen in these parts. That's all. It's like when I was living in North Minneapolis. I wasn't buying drugs, I wasn't selling drugs, and I wasn't taking drugs so therefore I wasn't a target. There were a couple of other things I wasn't, but I'm just not going to get into it.

I acquired a couple of things over the last weekend. I got a case for a future machine. A buddy of mine dropped off a dead processor and mobo combo a while back and I determined that the mobo is pretty much dead. The processor still works, so I'm going to build yet another machine. I've decided that this machine will be my music box. That way I can revert my AMD K6/2 550 to NT so I can still play with NT once in a while. I need to do this every once in a while when there's a particularly tough nut to crack at work.

Tuesday September 17, 2002

I spent 5 hours messing with my wireless stuff last night. The idea was to make it so I can print and login to my domain. What ended up happening was I spent 5 hours and got Jack-doodly-squat done. It was amazing. Only in technology can people do this. 5 hours of experimentation to get absolutely nothing done. What a drag.

To top off a lovely evening, I couldn't get to sleep. I dreaded what I would feel like if I didn't get some shut-eye but quick, but I ended up seeing 2 in the blessed AM on the clock. This I did not need. I had to be into work fairly early today to fix something that broke yesterday, so there wasn't much sleep for the ol'Timmer last night. I'm gonna sleep like a rock tonight.

The season is slowly changing around these parts. The black walnut on the boulevard is slowly dropping its football-shaped leaves. The Vikings have dropped 2 close ones in a row. I have an idea for Mike Tice: Run your starters 100% through the first 3 quarters and build up a ton of points. For the fourth quarter, bring everyone else off the bench who'd been riding the pine all game. They'd be fresh, they'd be second stringers, they'd suck, but at least they might be able to hold on to the towering lead they'd be staked with for the fourth quarter. They'd be fresh and even though they'd be playing the other team's front-line players, those players would have been worn down by the Vikes for 3 quarters. Hell, it's worth a shot, don't 'ya think?

It sure would beat the choke-o-rama that's been going on in the fourth quarter for the last 4 years.

Oh, and Mike? Your kicker is a head case. Bringing back Mort was a good move. Nobody misses extra points. Nobody.

The Gopher Football team looks good, but they've been playing teams like the Little Sisters of the Poor and Homeless, so they sure should look good. We'll see what they're made of when they hit the Big 10 (11).

I've not heard much about Gopher Hockey, except that we're about a month away from the first game. I can't wait.

Now for the best stuff. The Twins. It's official: from being nearly contracted into oblivion to AL Central Champs. What a disgrace. That MLB would consider moving the Twins, a team that so obviously reflects the work ethic and values of this area to another place just shows how out of touch the Commissioner is. Not only did they win, they clinched it with a half a month left in the regular season. They're presently 13 games up on the hapless Chisox. I'm finding it hard to even describe the disgust I feel toward the Commissioner's office. I've skewered Dud Stoolig here before, but I think the whole world needs to know that this idiot is wrong. Bad and wrong. Bad for baseball and wrong about the Twins.

Bud, you're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. WRONG

Will the Twins go far in the playoffs? Dunno. I don't like their chances against a hot Oakland, but that match up is a while down the road. The teams are pretty evenly matched and who knows, it might not even be Oakland. That one's going to go down to the wire and that's sure to take a lot out of the clubs involved. The Twins don't have too much to worry about and that's definitely going to be a plus going into the post season. I look for the Twins to compete for the AL championship. Beyond this, I predict nothing.

Thursday September 19, 2002

I'm nearly all for the war with Iraq. Anyone who reads this mess with any regularity knows this. If you don't, and wonder why I'd want to take such a stance, here's a few reasons why:

However inconvenient we find Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis themselves find him far more so.

He's used poison gas on his own people. True, they were a minority and one with statehood aspirations, but a civilized nation needs to deal with the conflicts within its borders in a way consistent with anything remotely resembling commonly acceptable ruling practices of the late 20th century. Poison gas is right out.

He's shown the willingness to violate other countries' sovereign soil to achieve his own *personal* ends. One could say that we're doing the same, but it's the common will of the people expressed by our elected representatives doing the job, not just one person's whim. Okay, perhaps it's one person's whim, but at least a whim of this sort will have to eventually pass through our legislative branch and be given approval.

The current government in Iraq looks a lot like a Fascist government than the supposed elected democracy it claims to be. If you don't think so, think about how long you'd last if you were the editor of an Iraqi newspaper critical of their current government. None of their current papers are because to do so would be suicide.

The list goes on, but I've managed to find a far more reasoned and intelligent argument for dismantling Iraq and various other dictatorships in the area.

Go check out Stephen Den Beste's essay Who Is Our Enemy and read what he has to say.

Saturday September 21, 2002

Big news around the household this weekend. Sarah has traveled to our nation's capitol to present important facts to important people. Presently I'm hanging out in the TV room listening to the fruits of a used record store binge. First up in the CD player will be XTC's album Go2. This has to be one of my very favorites of all time. Heck, 2 of the bands in my high school were covering these songs (Crowded Room, Buzzcity Talking) during our senior year. This album is just covered in cool tunes from front to back. Even the person at the used record store loved it--and you know they're picky.

I also picked up XTC's Drums and Wires, Peter Gabriel's SO, and The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta. Being they were used, I didn't spend a ton of cash on 'em. Life is good.

Another big piece of news around these parts is that we dumped digital cable. We had it in the old place over in Minneapolis, and we had it here as well. I'm here to tell you all that Minneapolis has Saint Paul beat here. Minneapolis (Time Warner) has a FAR better system than Saint Paul. The video quality is similar--lousy on the digital only channels, passable everywhere else, but the main differences lie in their navigation systems. The AT&T Broadband digital cable menu system is vastly inferior. Time Warner has a picture in picture feature that lets you watch what's going on as you're surfing the menu. AT&T has no such courtesy. Worse, AT&T has no less than 4 ads on their menu system at any given time. There's two large panes on the left side of the screen with one of them usually filled with an ad for the provider of the listings, TVGuide. The other ad is usually an extension of an infomercial or some other thing. The menu system is laid out in horizontal bars with the information on them. The bar at the top and the bar at the bottom also have some kind of ad that you have to skip through to get to the next page of items. It's no damn good. We were paying BIG bucks for this service. The LEAST they could have done was given us the picture in picture thing.

The other huge gripe I have was with their remote. I don't know if this is the standard remote control unit that comes with the Motorola digital cable box, but if it is, Motorola simply must go back to the drawing board. The control SUCKED. Half the time, any control you made never registered. Often, one button seemed not to work. It was also very difficult to just punch in a channel and hit enter. If you waited too long between your last number and the punching the enter key, you would end up in the digital music menu. Another feature that really sucked was that the listings would change about 10 minutes before the end of the hour. This wasn't too bad, except for the fact that if you picked a program that was to start a few minutes in the future, the box would ask you if you wanted to be reminded about it. It would NOT tune to it.

In a system that should be fairly mature, these usability issues are inexcusable. This is why we are no longer digital cable subscribers. I'll miss Speed TV, but I'll live. We now have analog cable. With the analog line, we lose the awful digital box (which we had to return) and gain a direct line into the TV. That's one less remote and that's a good thing.

The other big news is that I was a winner in the Twins playoff ticket lottery. My buddy Lou and I are getting a pair of cheap seats. The check's already in the mail and we're looking forward to a nice, long playoff run. Life is good.

Needless to say, I may be a bit busy in October.

Monday September 30, 2002

I'm here.

I feel bad for not hitting this thing for a whole week, but it's been a busy, takin' care o'business kind of week. Sarah had computer problems, I did some big projects and that left very little time to do much of anything.

The big achievement this weekend was getting the Big Truck back running again. The throttle valve had stuck open and so this made it very hard to start. It also made it a touch impossible to drive. I know that my buddy Lou will be needing it for his move to his new house, so I got on the stick and fixed the thing. I guess I'll need it shortly as well. Mucho Junko to Throwawayo.

With massive amounts of penetrating oil I was able to get the throttle valve to move more or less freely, however, it still stuck shut and open. The open part bugged me, but I can deal with that. The shut part sucked, but I was hoping it was some kind of automatic choke or enrichener circuit or something. Whatever the fact, I tried to start it and it seemed to want to, but it just didn't pop.

Back when I got the truck, I tossed some tune-up parts at it and it ran a lot better. This is usual. I bought spark plugs, but I didn't install them because number 6 plug was going to be a cast-iron bear to get at. It's tucked waaaaay back next to the firewall in an already cavernous and somewhat cluttered engine bay. Since the truck was sitting facing against a tree, I used the tree as a kind of step-stool/ladder to get all the way back. It was a bear, but I got it.

The plugs hadn't been changed in a while, either. The electrodes were heavily worn. They were pointy on both ends. The gap was about 3X what it should have been. Needless to say when I started it up with the new plugs in it fired right off. After going around the block a couple of times on my stuck throttle, it worked free and began to function the way it should. This is good. I call it a win.