Tecmo Super Memories

I can totally see my friends Paul & Jeremy and I doing something like this with the thousands of hours we probably spent playing this game:

This is SO me at age 3

Anyone who knew me when I was younger (particularly my mom) knows how, if pocket video cameras and YouTube existed back then, there would be a video of me doing this. It was in my blood...

Let It Snow

In case anyone was in doubt about having a white Christmas in Minnesota, today's start pretty much guarantees it, barring some weird global climate change massive event (in which case snow is the least of our worries!)

I have not been consistent in blogging but intend to fix that as one of my New Year's resolution - I don't know how many people read, but I've found that at least some people do, because I've had people ask me why I stopped.

To recap some significant events of the last few months...

Going On In The Country/World:

-(this week) DADT stand-alone repeal bill is passed by the House and the Senate. Originally this was attached to some military budget/funding bill (which is usually done because the sponsors think it has no chance to pass on its own), and it failed. As a stand-alone bill, with bi-partisan support it passed. To me, that means: 1) Maybe congress should actually try passing bills on their merits instead of with earmarks and side-door deals, and 2) There is some hope that our government can actually work together when it wants to (and they're going to have to now if we have any hope of things getting better)
-The "It Gets Better" project continues to gain support by a wide range and variety of people and groups. This project was started, among others, by columnist Dan Savage, in response to all of the recent GLBT teen suicides. It saddens me to think that in 2010, kids are still taking their own life because they think (real or perceived) that their parents, family, friends, etc. think they are worthless, condemned, going to hell, or the like. Regardless of your own personal beliefs and values, NO one, especially a kid, should EVER have to feel that way.

Going On In My Corner:

-On October 30th, I made my annual trek to Nebraska, and saw the Huskers play Missouri (likely for the final time) and win 31-17 - it was a fantastic day, and along with Will & Amanda who always get me great tickets to go with them, cousin Andy and friend Tony were along.
-On November 11th, we became the proud "parents" of a third (and three is the limit!) cat, 6-month-old "Lady Zoya Mae Triped", who was found with a broken leg and taken to the shelter, where they tried to heal her, but the vet had to amputate her front right leg. However, the way she runs around and plays, you'd think she had 5 legs most of the time :) We love her very much and she has been a wonderful and energetic addition to the household.
-December 11th saw a huge snowstorm which kept us inside for more than two days - and many Rochester roads still haven't recovered (and today is going to pile onto that!).
-The Friday of that same weekend (10th) my server crashed. Many of you know that I am kind of a computer hobbyist and have a 4TB centralized server with all our music, movies, pictures, etc. While it has some safegards that allow a drive to fail (and be replaced without any consequence), two drives failing is too much :( I started doing full backups last year, but somehow hadn't done one since May 28th, so lost 7 months of pictures. So to everyone out there - BACKUP YOUR IRREPLACABLE DATA!!!!! And really, to be very safe, for things like pictures, you should back it up within your house, and also have an offsite backup (either with one of the many affordable online services, or burn them to DVDs and put in a safe deposit box or something). A tough lesson to learn, could have been worse I guess...
-Last weekend saw a whole slough of holiday parties, including an annual cookie baking party we love to attend - this year we made the Cinnabon cookies that Erin discovered the recipe for. The first time we made them, I think both of us were amazed at how good they were and how much they tasted like Cinnabon.

I have the next two weeks off (hooray!) and intend to relax, visit family, catch up on all sorts of things, watch more "Dexter" (Erin and I got hooked while we were stuck inside the house for 2 days) and "True Blood" (I owe friend Shelley some good hours of watching and wine).

Peace and blessings for everyone and their families during this season!

Perspective

I have been absent from blogging for awhile, one of my new year's resolutions...but I felt like I needed to post this.

We have been paying a person to do our snow removal (our driveway/sidewalks) after my snow blower died last year, and he was always very reliable, punctual, and thorough. This weekend we had a big snowstorm here and no one came to clear on Sunday, Monday, and today...I called again this afternoon to see if I could get some kind of ETA and his message said that he had gotten sick on Sunday and went to the hospital and was diagnosed with cancer. Wow. After hearing that, I kind of just stopped and realized how my "problems" didn't seem quite so important, and how thankful I am to have the family and friends I have in my life.

I ask anyone reading this to take a second to send your prayers and positive thoughts and energy to Jeff, our snow removal guy, for good health and recovery.

Eclective Time

I know I've been horribly absent in blogging as of late, but, this is part of the reason.

My band, "Eclective" is performing this evening (Friday, November 19th) at Prime Time Sports Bar in Burnsville, MN. We will start playing around 11:30 and close out the night. There are also two acts before us that are fantastic - check it all out on our Facebook page!

Hometown Animal Shelter

Have been lax on the blogging with everything going on, but had to share this one. I recently reconnected with my 6th grade teacher on Facebook (she was one of my favorite teachers growing up) and found out she is heading up an animal shelter/care group, "Happy Paws". It was great to be able to make a donation to an animal shelter in my hometown.

http://plattsmouthanimalshelter.com/

And in related news, we'll be getting a third cat sometime soon (hopefully very soon!) - she was found with a broken leg and has had a fairly long road to recovery and had to have one of her front legs amputated. She is fine now (runs around just like any cat) but we're waiting on the last traces of ringworm to disappear before we bring her home (our cats had ringworm when we got them and we don't want to repeat that one).

Rethinks on the keyboard

Neat stuff for mobile devices...I can see myself using this, my fat fingers are prone to error on autocorrect.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/11/01/1515236/8pen-Reinvents-the-Keyboard-For-Mobile-Devices?from=rss

It Gets Better campaign - Google

I already like Google from a technology standpoint, but this is very commendable from a humanity standpoint...

It Gets Better campaign

This has been a fantastic story to see unfolding (and I love the power of the internet).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101015/pl_yblog_upshot/surprising-new-it-gets-better-videos

(the "It Gets Better" campaign was started by columnist Dan Savage in response to the recent rash of gay teen suicides - article here)

I was fairly lucky that I never got harassed or beaten up or anything like that in school, I guess I was big enough and did enough "non-gay" stuff to get by. I don't know what my home town high school is like in 2010, but I'm sure in 1990 I would not have been able to have been openly gay in high school without being beaten up (or worse).

No kid should have to go through this, regardless of what anyone's personal beliefs on the subject are, and it's the responsibility of ALL adults, parents, teachers, leaders, etc. to make sure that a kid never gets to the point of feeling like they have to take their own life.

This is why sci-fi is fun...

Thanks to friend Ryan for this one:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/yesterdays-enterprisethe-offspring,45195/

"Yesterday's Enterprise" was by far my favorite Star Trek:The Next Generation episode, mostly because it was just good, but also that it was a single, "non-epic" episode that still affected and connected entire series story arcs. This is one of those that really makes you think about the significance of a single decision or event, and how it can affect so much of the future. Good stuff....

Video Game memories...

A few fun video game nostalgia links....

First, to make all of you 80s kids feel old, Happy 25th Birthday Mario!

Second, also probably for the 80s kids, The Greatest 100 NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) games of all time. Even before reading it, I guessed (correctly) Super Mario Bros 3 was #1....but this has sparked a lively debate between myself and some other friends. It all depends on what you define as "greatest" - largely it's probably a subjective and personal choice, but you might factor in things like how many were sold, how much of an "impact" a game had, how many hours you spent playing it, if it's still being played, etc. If I had to choose #1's in categories for myself....

Favorite NES game overall - Super Mario Bros 3

NES game I spent the most hours playing -Tecmo Super Bowl (by far, an insane amount probably)

NES game I was most "intrigued" by - The Legend of Zelda

The ones I still play today - Super Mario Bros [1], The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II

NES game that I thought had the most "impact" on video games - Super Mario Bros [1] - without that game, Nintendo probably never would have existed, it was HUGE leap forward in video games (from single-screen, never-ending games to scrolling games with a "goal") and has spawned off the most succesful game series in history.

So...there you have it. The debate rolls on. Just remember, if you're still playing NES games, up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start

:)

Cyclones and Big Red!

After a very busy week of work, a 5-hour band practice, and a rainy-turned-sunny band gig at Thursdays on First (thanks to everyone who came down to watch!) I am looking forward to a wonderful, relaxing 3-day Labor Day weekend! Started out Friday with our development cluster at working being shut down at noon, which effectively meant we couldn't do much, so after the traditional Friday man-lunch at Famous Dave's, headed home and after tying up a few more work loose ends, made some tea and curled up with a book as the weather outside was cold and rainy (high of 63...yeah right!)

Happy Hour at Catch 22 with some friends and a later evening get-together with some others capped off Friday.

And today...the official opening Saturday of college football. It all started earlier on Thursday night with my alma mater Iowa State Cyclones beating Northern Illinois 27-10! And tonight, Nebraska opens at home against Western Kentucky at 6pm. This is my first college football season "off the TV grid", the Nebraska game would have been available on PPV but I can either listen or join one of my Nebraska buddies at one of the sports bars and watch there.

To update my "off the TV grid" quest status - I knew college football was likely going to be the toughest of the things to be able to replicate because it's live so you can't watch after-the-fact videos or buy them on DVD or whatever. I still get the main OTA broadcast channels including ABC which is where many of the games are on, and I am now learning about ESPN3.com which streams MANY of the day's games (including some of the ones that are on regular ESPN). So for me anyway, that leaves the games that are on Fox Sports Net as "unavailable" to me at home. Which will be somewhat of a problem this year, but next year when Nebraska is in the Big 10 and on the Big Ten Network, I see that they are going to provide live internet streaming. The main downside is that these probably won't be in HD - but I imagine that will change.

So far I haven't had to upgrade my internet connection speed, but it is probably inevitable if I can start streaming HD and doing things like Netflix. But even a $10 or $20 increase in my ISP bill is still an $80 savings over what I was paying for satellite (and internet speed-ups benefit all my internet usage - working at home, browsing, email, etc.).

Otherwise we haven't missed having "grid" TV at all - most of the TV we've watched in the summer has been DVD/computer video stuff, including catching up on some seasons of TV shows we had missed.

Shameless self-promotion

...and encouraging people to come to Thursdays on First this week and eat, drink, and be merry! In particular...from 4pm-5:30pm on the south stage (next to Bilotti's and Dooley's on First Ave) will be...my band! From Bob Marley reggae to Aretha Franklin soul to Santana, we will be doing some great tunes!

Come one, come all!

DADT

There are so many of these stories I don't generally forward them (just hop on youtube and search on "DADT" and you'll see them) but this is an example of the perfectly good servicepeople and officers that we're discharging for absolutely no good reason. This guy was discharged despite keeping quiet about his personal life and despite both his captain and chief saying how good a serviceman he was and how much they needed him back on duty.

Wesley Snipes as Geordi???

Another fun one for all you Star Trek TNG fans:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/08/star-trekcasting.html

We're in trouble...

I know you can edit video and find stupid people, but the fact that there are even THIS MANY functioning adult people in our country that don't know some of the most simple things about history and current events is tragic.

Video Game nostalgia

All of you that played Atari 2600 games will remember these:

http://www.rundlc.com/news/the-misleading-world-of-atari-box-art-part-two-xbox-live/

I think it was kind of fun to imagine what the game would actually look like/do based on the graphic on the front of the game. Now we're pretty much there :)

10 ideas to change the world

A neat/short pictoral article with some great simple ideas. Thanks to friend Dan for this one:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/23/10.simple.things/index.html?hpt=C2

Big Band Weather

Lots of fun and beautiful weather going on last night in Pine Island, as I subbed on lead alto for the "Rochester Big Band", a band I've played with in the past. The Pine Island crowd at the band shell was great, the weather was great, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of playing big band music :)

An overall productive weekend, including our "kitty" life returning to normal as Fluffy Face is now out of kitty jail and we're slowly letting him back into more rooms. It's nice to see them both back chasing each other around and laying in their favorite spots by the window on the couch. Besides investing in a second identical litter box (so they each have their "own"), I purchased some cat-calming plugins from catfaeries.com, as well as cleaning the spots Fluffy Face has had accidents on a number of times with the special "kitty-be-gone" scent-removing enzyme.

In the coming weeks I'll be gearing up for what should be a great musical evening, playing saxophone with my friend Dan's "put-together" band. We had our first rehearsal last week and WOW is there some talent there. We are playing from 4pm-5:30pm at the south stage of Thursdays on First on September 2nd, opening for the feature band that evening. I encourage everyone to come out and have some drinks at Dooley's pub and sit and take in the great music :)

Some historical geek stuff

First, George Lucas must need to buy another few ranches or something, because here come the Star Wars movies on...Blu Ray.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/14/george-lucas-officially-announces-star-wars-on-blu-ray-in-2011/

I have purchased the "original" ep 4, 5, and 6 four times now - the original VHS tapes (Han shoots first), the THX remastered VHS (Han shoots first) which was a dumb purchase because I didn't have a sound system to handle the better sound at the time, Special Edition VHS widescreen (Greedo shoots first, Jabba in Star Wars, super cleaned up special effects, extra Darth Vader walk scene in Empire), and finally the Special Edition DVD widescreen (Anakin at the end has been replaced by the Episode 2 and 3 Anakin). I doubt I'll be buying the Blu-Rays unless something changes - I haven't dove into Blu-Ray yet and don't plan to, as I predict in 5 years physical media will be obsolete in favor of everything being streamed/online.

Second, a fun "comparison" article between the Apple II graphics tablet (from 1979) and the Apple iPad:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180224/Face_off_1979_Apple_Graphics_Tablet_vs._2010_Apple_iPad

Of course realistically there is no comparison, but it is a great illustration of how technology has changed between 1979 and 2010. I think one of the most interesting points is that the graphics pad was $650 in 1979, the iPad and its thousands of times more advanced technology is $499 in 2010. $650 in 1979 is $1900 in 2010 adjusted for inflation. So for roughly 1/4 of the cost of the 1979 graphic pad we are getting the iPad.

I didn't have a graphics pad, but I did have two Apple IIGS's, and grew up learning to program on Apple IIe's and original MacIntoshes. I remember the memory card we added to our IIGS - originally it comes with 512k of memory (k!!!!) and there was a huge card you could buy, roughly the size of a VHS tape, that added another 512k (k!!!). I just bought two tiny 2G (gig!!!!) memory modules that were about the size of a half a credit card.

And the original Apple IIGS processor? 1MHz (one megahertz). My current Intel core i7 is 3GHz (three gigahertz). My phone processor is 1GHz. The processor in the TV is probably at least 300MHz, heck the fridge probably has a microprocessor bigger than that, the ABS in my car uses at least a 486/66MHz processor :)

North Dakota Bois

Another great Katy Perry parody :)

Rubik

I love that 30 years later, the Rubik's cube is still in the news:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/study-uncovers-every-possible-rubik-s-cube-solution/1407748

Corporations should stay out of politics...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Liberal-groups-push-to-apf-2321043209.html?x=0

I'll refrain from commenting on the particular situation with Target...in general though, this is the exact reason why it's in the best interest of corporations and companies to stay out of the election part of politics. In this example, if Target donates money to a candidate or organization on "the other side" they are opening themselves up to everyone demanding that they also donate to their "side" in order not to alienate anyone.

So, while I firmly believe that there shouldn't be a law prohibiting anyone from making political donations or support (the Supreme Court struck down the laws that have been passed to try to limit and categorize who and what can and can't donate, and personally I think that any type of grouping or limiting is a violation of the first amemdment), I believe companies are smartest to stay out of this stuff, and stick to doing things based on business decisions. A good example are companies that offer domestic partner benefits to their employees - it's much easier (and to me, less discriminating) to say "we offer domestic partner benefits to our employees because we want to attract the best talent available, regardless of their race, gender, orientation, etc." vs. "we offer domestic partner benefits to our employees because we are taking a moral stand in favor of the civil rights of GLBT people". To take the position of wanting to hire the best and brightest employees, period, is as non-discriminating as you can be, and is a hard statement for anyone to argue with or be offended by.

Security and LastPass (and Yubikey)

I am "behind" in terms of what I've wanted to write over the past two weeks as I have been extremely busy with, well just about everything.

But, I wanted to mentioned something I found recently related to internet password management and password security. As I have mentioned in other posts, besides being security and backup paranoid when it comes to all things computer, internet security has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. I actually hope to take a graduate program in "Network Security and Information Assurance", a program the U of M starts this year. We'll see where that fits in...

Anyway - one of the podcasts I listen to regularly is "Security Now" with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte. I highly recommend that anyone with even a small interest in how the internet and security works listen to this weekly 1-hour show - they go into topics that are quite advanced but break them down into fairly simple pieces. Plus, every week they cover the latest in security news, what patches you should make sure to apply, etc.

Last week, they covered a password management tool called "LastPass" (http://lastpass.com). Password management for internet sites is a very difficult thing to do in this era where we all have many, many site accounts, userids, passwords, etc. Just keeping track of what sites you have userids on is hard, much less what the userid and password is. This drives many people (including myself up until now) to use the same password for many sites, sometimes all sites, which is a VERY bad thing to do - if someone gets a hold of your one password, it wouldn't take too much to start trying to hack into every account you have. I admit that I was doing this to some degree (even though I know better!) and was keeping an excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything. I kept this on a thumb drive that was physically in my possession, but that's still not a good solution (and if you don't have the thumb drive with you you're out of luck).

Lastpass solves all of these problems, and does it brilliantly and securely. From the convenience/management side of things, when you set up an account with Lastpass, they create an online database which can be accessed by signing in from any web browser anywhere. Additionally, there is a plugin for pretty much any browser or platform known to man - for me, Firefox on Windows and the Android mobile phone operating system were what I needed, but the list was huge. Once you install the plugin, and add your sites and passwords (it actually does this automatically too the first time you visit a site - more on that later), when you visit the site again, you can either have Lastpass auto-fill the userid/password fields from the database, or you can manually select "fill" when you are at the site login page if you're uncomfortable with them automatically doing it.

So, storing passwords in an online database sounds scary...let me tell you why it's not in this case. What Lastpass stores on their servers is an encrypted version of all your data - even the password to your Lastpass account is encrypted! Everything is encrypted on the client (your browser) side, with a key based on your userid and password, meaning only you can generate this key and decrypt the data that is obtained from their server or encrypt the data stored in their server. Their documentation and forums are very clear on how they do this (I read a lot of it) and several people have done independent tests and verified that they are doing what they say they're doing. What this means is, there is no way that they, or anyone, can get your stored passwords with the data stored on their servers. Only you (or someone with your Lastpass userid and password, which is only you if you're careful with it) can do anything with the data they store. Meaning that, for example, FBI could get a warrant and ask Lastpass to give them some password data from their database, and Lastpass literally could not comply - there is no technical way they could give them anything meaninful.

Now here's the kicker. All of this is free. Well almost all of it - if you want to set up your smart phone browsers to do this, there is a premium version which costs $12/year, and gives you a few more features. But most people wouldn't need to do this (I got it because I wanted to do some of their advanced stuff but that's because I'm a geek :) The premium version also gives you the option of adding a Yubikey/Yubikeys to your account. If you want to know more about what a Yubikey security key is, go to http://yubico.com/ and read about them (it's complicated and far too much to write about in a blog entry, but basically it's a second authentication factor which makes this even more secure). I have pictured the 3 I bought below - they're small USB plug-ins with one button.

For anyone who's interested, I'd be glad to show them how my Lastpass account works.

A pile of used bandaids

I'm way behind in all the things I want to blog - I hope someday I can blog straight out of my brain, because a lot of my best writing ideas come when I'm not by a computer.

I really need to start reading more fiction and less history, biographies, and especially news, because, even though I find them fascinating, I also find them frustrating. (I believe I get my fascination with history and humanity from my dad...)

Today I read an article in "Time" (one of the few news magazines I find to be the most objective) about the economic situation that states are in right now, having to look at cutting all sorts of stuff. I didn't know that only the federal government is allowed to run a budget deficit, states are required by law to balance their budgets. I guess most of the time, the normal ups and downs of the economy balance each other out and usually don't cause problems. Apparently this "down" has been a lot longer and deeper than most and states are having to make what they call "real cuts" now - into services that are ingrained like education, medicaid, etc.

The situation the state governments are in sucks, and I don't really know how they're going to deal with in the very short term. But I don't understand why no one will stand up and say out loud what the truth really is about all of this. We have overinflated and artificially grew our economy for many many years (not just one president and congress, but many) and now we're going to have to pay for it. And that means if we want to continue some of these fundamental services that make our country good and strong and secure (and I'm not talking militarily secure, but secure and "sound" as a society) we are going to have to pay more taxes. Stuff costs money. We can pay less in taxes and have lesser quality of everything and have stuff run down, or we can pay more in taxes and have higher quality public services and infrastructure. It's not rocket science.

Most people probably don't want to hear that from the guy with a good job, but they should hear it from the guy that pays more in taxes as a single (at least from a tax standpoint) person in a higher tax bracket. Certainly I'd rather pay less in taxes and keep more money for myself, but if paying taxes means better education, better infrastructure, better stability, etc. then I'm willing to do it. Certainly that means our governments should spend wisely, not be wasteful, and get the most value out of our tax money as they can. But in the end, stuff still costs money.

What we seem to be doing now (getting to the explanation of the blog title) is that we keep altering laws, doing magic with budget numbers and the money supply, etc. to band-aid whatever the problem of the moment is. But we're getting to the point where all we have is a pile of used bandaids.

For example, just on the way in to work this morning I heard a commercial advertising a firm that can help you "settle" your credit card debt, and how if you have over $10,000 in credit card debt, there are government programs that can settle it for a fraction of the cost. Seriously? This is an example of another bandaid - banks get their money, and people who were irresponsible (yes, I'll say it out loud - an individual who charges up more credit card debt than they can really afford cannot just blame bad bank laws and deregulation) get set back to $0 and get to start spending more money and buying things which artificially stimulates the economy again...until somewhere down the road we have to pay for that bailout.

I realize that every situation is different, and someone who buys a house and then loses their job a few years later was not being irresponsible. But that is not everyone. I guess I've always been under the assumption that if I take out a loan for something, or charge something on a credit card, I actually have to pay for that at some point.

Why a salad costs more than a Big Mac...

Thanks to my friend Christian for sharing this one:

http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/05/18/federal-subsidies-vs-nutritional-recommendations/

I've always wondered about this too - I realize that land, weather, environment dictate to some degree the types of things that can be raised in a given area, but probably not the degree of the disparity in our country.

Thursdays on First

I really love that Rochester has done so much over the past few years to promote downtown and community events like "Thursdays on First". Whoever says there's nothing going on in Rochester is selling the town short. Sure there isn't a huge amount of "night life" but there are a ton of people from all walks of life out having fun at things like this.

I had the opportunity again last night to come down and jam with some other great musicians, thanks to my good friend Dan who I've known from various musical things including the salsa band. We all jammed by Sonte's for 2 hours and had a great crowd of people watching and enjoying the beautiful Minnesota summer weather. I hope we have the opportunity to do it again!

Happy 4th

Not an especially nice weather day, but a fun weekend, and especially nice that it's on a Sunday and I get Monday off of work too!

We've had a fun weekend of wedding rehearsal, wedding, and a fun evening out downtown with all the friends back for the wedding.

This morning was also very cool, as for church I played "America The Beautiful" as a bell solo - the third solo I've done. It was really neat and I think everyone enjoyed it.

Hilarious Bonnie Tyler video

If you never watch any of the others ones I've shared, you should watch this one - especially if you were of the era when Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" song was hugely popular om the 80s. This video is the actual original video with "literal" lyrics put to it. I never really thought about how scattered and mindless the video actually is :)



Happy 4th everyone!

iPhone 4: If at first you don't succeed....

I have to chuckle a bit when reading about this whole iPhone 4 "don't hold it wrong" antenna thing:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Apple-stunned-to-find-iPhones-apf-1175483258.html?x=0

Now, I actually do believe them in this case, that they're probably not doing signal strength calculations correctly - in fact I've read some more objective, credible articles about researchers having determined that on their own. But the phrase my friends and I in college used a lot still comes to mind - "If at first you don't succeed, redefine success." And as funny as that is, it happens all the time - benchmarks, performance tests, and, yes, signal strength calculations :)

Some related phrases, "Politics is perception" (from one of my all-time favorite movies, "Te American President"), and "So what I told you is true...from a certain point of view" (Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker in "Return of the Jedi" when he tells Luke that he wasn't actually lying when he said Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father), come to mind. Really, so much of life IS how we make it - and some (a lot?) of how we perceive things is our own choice. So if it makes us feel better to see 4 bars instead of 2, even if ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has actually changed with our signal strength, maybe that's ok? I guess one of my other favorite phrases may apply here too... "Ignorance is bliss" ... often true.

Google

I like Google for a variety of reasons, but I'll add this one now:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38037689/ns/business-careers/
(the title is somewhat misleading...you have to read the first paragraph at least to understand it)

Weather Dodge Ball

A fun and eventful weekend...Friday after work started out with me breaking my phone (cracking the screen which pretty much makes it useless since it's a touch-screen). More on that later...but Friday evening I went to a final happy hour for my good friends Brian and Jossie who are moving back to Florida. We will miss them lots, and I look forward to visiting them sometime. We were able to sit outside at Whistle Binkies for awhile before the rain/storm hit, and then found tables inside to talk, laugh, reminisce, etc.

Saturday after a leisurely morning, we headed up to St. Paul for my cousin's wedding. A very fancy affair, at one of the University buildings on Summit Ave (next door to the Governor's Mansion, so you know it was pretty nice). Again, beat the rain and storm enough to have an outdoor ceremony (the reception was of course indoors). Much talking, laughing, and catching up with friends and family.

Sunday evening was my final Notochords jazz band gig for the "season" (we start back up again in the fall). Pine Island - again, the weather just looked like it was going to be ominous, but after some cloudiness during the day and 5 minutes of hard rain (which stopped me from finishing the lawn), it actually got pretty pleasant in the evening. We had a good crowd at the band shell, 100+ people they said, and a fun evening of big band music.

A few dates of note...the important one being today, marking 4 years that Erin and I have been together. Yes, 4 years...hard to believe. Somewhere in the next week or two are also the 2-year birthdays for our kittehs (we don't know the exact dates), as well as both Erin's and my birthdays the first half of July. AND, the first week of July will mark 13 years for me at IBM. Combine that with the 4th of July and another fun wedding event this weekend and there's a lot of fun going on :)

Bionic Kitties!

OK, this one is near and dear to me for so many reasons...

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-06/british-amputee-cat-first-get-bone-grafted-exoprosthetic-paws

I've seen so many cat and other pet accidents, disabilities, etc. and am always amazed at how resilient they are. The most recent story my friend Bill told me was about a cat with one leg missing that his friend adopted - the cat pretty much just dealt with it and made it work and after being around it awhile you hardly even noticed.

I'd certainly take a pet with a disability in a heartbeat. But it's cool that they can do things like this now (hopefully some of this pioneering is going on in the "people" medical field as well!)

Star Trek meets Ke$ha

I have to be a little proud when my wonderful (and non-geeky) boyfriend finds things that combine our interests:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/21/star-trek-gets-much-neede_n_619791.html?ref=fb&src=sp

(in fairness, he DOES like Star Trek but probably not as much as I do)

Landscaping

A great start to what will likely be a long, multi-year project...


From top to bottom, there is some variety of lilac (with rosemary cover), lamb's ear, parsley, wine & roses, lamb's ear, and some kind of azelia (with rosemary cover).

The weather wasn't the most cooperative yesterday, but it didn't pour so I guess that's a good thing (it cleared up about an hour after we finished of course :)

Massive Birthdays

My niece is rapidly becoming famous for her over-the-top birthday parties - both activities and number of guests. Here is a picture of one of the primary attractions of this year's:


and the present I got her (if you don't get it, you need to watch the "Big Bang Theory" TV show):


A fun day!

Holy Close Calls

OK, I guess I need to pay more attention to the local news occasionally. Thursday night Southern MN was hit with some very strong storms and weather. It was very windy and hard rain that I could see. I was keeping up watching the local TV station, and as the sirens went off, they were insisting that there were no tornadoes in Rochester and they assumed it was because of the high winds (70mph). Wrong I guess:

Graphic of the Tornado's Path
(and original article: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/?n=jun1710)

Now...if you look at the picture, and you know where I live, I was less than half a mile away. The article said it was an EF1 on the scale, the "weakest" of tornadoes (if you can use the word "weak" and "tornado" in the same sentence). Still...kinda scary now that I know. I saw where it must have gone across 50th ave when I was driving to work the next morning, and obviously with the damage it did to the Menard's building and all the town houses in Lincolnshire, it must have been strong enough.

I guess I'll be thankful I didn't see it, and that we had no damage.

Bazinga

I saw my 5-year-old niece this weekend, and one of the first things she told me was "Bazinga" - Sheldon Cooper's word from the Big Bang Theory. I couldn't have been more proud of her :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSqestqf63k
(CBS, HD)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skQGve3XksU
(more bazinga but lower quality)

Legal Ridiculous-ness

Warning: Rant ahead...proceed with caution.

If you want to read one of many articles about what I'm going to talk about, look here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/google-wifi-sniffing/ or just google "google wifi legal".

Google recently launched a project which was to help map out wi-fi hotspots and connectivity in relation to physical geographic location. They have done similar projects in the past like the "street view" many of us have seen on Google Maps (where you can type in an address and then click on Street View and actually SEE a picture of the building, street, etc.).

Well, as a consequence of how they did this wi-fi mapping project, they also collected a bunch of random wi-fi traffic. I won't go into all the technical details, but basically, if you have a wireless router, it runs in a "broadcast" mode, which means that all the traffic being sent back and forth between your laptop and the router is "out in the air" for everyone within range to see - much like a radio or TV station broadcasts their signals, but on a much smaller scale. Of course almost any modern router can be configured to encrypt this traffic, so that only the device that initiated a particular connection can decrypt its own traffic (and no one else's). Which is totally fine for the purposes of what Google was trying to accomplish - they didn't care WHAT the data being sent back and forth was, all they cared about was the unique ID of the router and mapping that to where geographically they were at when they picked up the signal.

However...not everyone configures their routers to encrypt traffic, sometimes intentionally - if you configure for encryption, you must have a password to connect to the router, and if you want a router to be an "open hotspot" like they have at coffee shops, etc. then you can't be set up for encryption. So, while Google was capturing the data it actually wanted (the router ID, etc.) it also captured bunches of random unencrypted data.

The amount of data they "collected" from any one router was 5 seconds or less.

Despite all of that, various law enforcement and legal branches of countries around the world have decided that this was not an accident, that Google must have had malicious intent, and that they should be prosecuted.

There are MANY problems with this. So here we go...

1) Google didn't do anything that ANYONE else with a wireless device can't do. Sure, they did it on a large scale, but if the owner of a router is making their router "open" by not encrypting traffic, they are assuming the risk of all their traffic being seen BY ANYONE who is in range of that router. Period. End of story.

2) Google has the LEAST motivation or anyone to use such a manpower-intensive method to try and potentially collect personal data, given that they have more data available to them than anyone on the planet with searches, gmail, etc. (yes, you should all remember that we all TRUST Google when we use all their great neat free stuff - all our "personal" data is still on THEIR servers somewhere). If they were really after the kind of data you can get doing random wi-fi captures, they have much better, easier, quicker, and cheaper ways of doing it.

3) Google has been cooperative, shown how this process works and turned over all their source code, and has followed the requests made of many countries to either given them the data collected, destroy it, etc. They don't want it, need it, and don't care if it's just destroyed.

The reason this bothers me so much is that all of this has now entered the political, corporate, etc. realm. We are spending time, energy, and resources prosecuting something that doesn't need to be prosecuted, when we don't even have a legal system that is capable of keeping up with the "real" technology bad guys out there. So since we have no laws or means of finding the people that need to be found and prosecuted, we're prosecuting the big, visible target because it's available.

The message that SHOULD be coming out of all of this is that it is YOUR responsibility to manage YOUR privacy in this networked world. If all router owners configured for encryption, this would have been a non-issue. And people need to realize that whatever they put out onto the internet, "in the cloud" is out there and is no longer completely in your control. Not only do you trust someone like Google or Facebook to keep your data private (and even then THEY have access to it should they choose to) but you also trust your ISP, phone service provider, etc. because THEY have access to everything you do, should they choose to. It is certainly in all these companies best interest to provide you with privacy but there is no guarantee of that.

You can have your opinion about how much power Google is going to wield as time goes on with how much information and data they have and control. And that should be watched. But our legal system needs to be changed or updated to handle the fast pace that our world changes.

Bad Adobe Flash plugin exploit - consider upgrading

Described in this Steve Gibson article:

http://steve.grc.com/2010/06/06/adobe-flash-forward-to-v10-1/

The "official" version 10.1 will be out soon anyway, but given how much Flash is used all over the internet, you might want to consider downloading the uninstaller and install 10.1 RC7 as described - Firefox won't automatically do that if you do "check for updates" because this is still a release candidate.

Rue McClanahan

The 3rd "Golden Girl" to pass away, this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_en_tv/us_obit_rue_mcclanahan_13

She was only 76, sad...

Blood Donation Ban

Another article about the need to lift the ban on blood and organ donations by gay men. Besides the fact that the American Red Cross and American Blood Banks Association have long said that that the ban is scientifically and medically unwarranted (in light of better testing coupled with the fact that risk group factors among all populations are getting close to even now), this report estimates that the blood supply would increase by 1.4% and the organ donor supply would increase by 2.9% if the ban was lifted.

I know that on me alone, they lose the 8 pints a year I used to donate - I'd estimate that they've lost about 50 pints from me by now. My blood is fine, I'd gladly be donating 8 times a year.

IBM Muppets

This was on slashdot this morning:

http://technologizer.com/2010/05/31/ibm-muppets/

Kinda fun that even in 1967 the company I work for had a sense of humor :)

50 Worst Inventions

I don't know why I like reading these but it's fun to remember the flops throughout history...

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991902,00.html

Stepping off the TV "grid" - post-update (#4)

Just thought DirecTV users (and maybe other services are like this too) would want to know this one.

Apparently, once your service has been terminated (and the receivers run the next nightly update), you can no longer watch any shows you had recorded on your DVR(s). I'm sure this is in their terms of service, and they explicitly make the "DVR Service" a separate line item on your bill...still, it seems kind of dumb that they wouldn't let you still watch pre-recorded shows until you have to send back the receivers. Especially given that they told me that they'd send me return boxes within 7 days and then I'd have another 7 days to return them - so at most I would have had 14 days or less.

I was kind of expecting that this might happen, and I did watch everything I really wanted to watch already, but there were a few things left on there that I probably would have watched over the weekend before resetting the receivers. I guess it's kind of surprising because now I have been left with a bad taste in my mouth, whereas yesterday I was actually quite pleased that they were very thorough and professional on the cancellation process.

Also, just as a privacy thing, it is always best to do a full reset/erase of everything on any electronic device (if possible) before returning it or sending it in - whether it be a receiver, iPod, phone, etc. so that no personal data is accidentally left on them. You only need to read Slashdot for a few days to see how important this is :)

Facebook privacy settings

For people who use Facebook, you may have noticed or read that their privacy settings are getting progressively "worse" (at least by default) - they're starting to share a lot more information with third party stuff.

A general rule about anything on the internet is to know that anything you put out there has the potential to be seen by anyone, and once it's out there, it's out there and can never really be taken back. If you treat all sites that way, you'll probably stay out of trouble.

That being said, many people use Facebook a lot, and Slashdot has provided some tips and open source software links for automatically setting your privacy settings to their maximum levels.

More $-saving

My good friend Shelley publishes a blog on being debt-free and money-saving, which has inspired me to think more along these lines. I'm definitely not "frugal" but I also like the idea of getting more value for what I'm spending money on.

Besides the $100/month I'll be saving without DirecTV, yesterday I added my mom's cell phone to our existing family plan. Sprint actually encourages people to do this, up to 5 phones on one account, and with our setup, everything is shared (unlimited texting, data, etc.). For my mom, it's $30/month savings from having her own account.

So something to consider - I've know some couples who pool accounts with their friends to save money and split the cost, if you can work out the details it's definitely a good cost saver.

And...this week I will be paying off my car. This is huge for me, because I've never had a paid-off car in the nearly 14 years I've been working. Because of circumstances and my affinity for buying new stuff, this car is actually my 4th in 14 years - 3 new pickups and the Saturn Vue, all of them have been new, and 2 of them have been leased. Probably not the best choice money-wise...then again, I enjoyed them a lot when I had them :)

Stepping off the TV "grid" - update #3

Well, patience, when it comes to electronics and things of that nature, has never been my strong suit (I am very patient about other things, but as my parents will probably attest to, there are certain things that, once started, I have a one-track mind on).

As the last paragraph may have suggested, I cancelled my DirecTV service this morning. This was prompted by 1) using the previously described Windows Media Center setup for a couple of days, and it works perfectly (and I didn't realize how much I was missing without HD locals!) and 2) the fact that last night I figured out that Windows 7 has a built-in UPnP server and transcodes/streams the recorded TV to any UPnP capable device, not just MS Media Extenders. I think this is new with Windows 7 - Microsoft is finally figuring out it's to their advantage to interoperate with stuff (this actually makes me GLAD I have Windows for the first time in like forever). I also took a look at how much stuff was on the DVR that we will NEVER watch (we don't even have time to watch the 3 or 4 new shows we keep up with).

I still have/had no complaints or problems with DirecTV. If my hobby wasn't computers and media devices, DirecTV would still be the best choice I believe when compared with Dish, Cable, etc. But I don't think in the long run any of them will be relevant compared with the internet's media capability and flexibility.

I was a tiny bit disappointed that they didn't try harder to keep me - I have been a customer for 6 years and am the kind of customer they want. They offered to take $27 off my bill every month without even extending my contract, but that's still about $70/month, not enough to compete with "free" (yes I know it's not "free" but it's free for me given all the investment I would have made anyway in equipment and internet service).

So...at midnight tonight, I will be "disconnected" for the first time in 14 years, since college when I didn't have cable.

Am still evaluating whether or not I need to upgrade my internet connection speed. Given that I'm getting some of this off the air and not over the internet, it might not be necessary now.

Down one mower

I just sold my old 11-year-old Craftsman mower that has one of the self-propel drive wheels not working, for $25. I now have $25 and more garage space...I call this a win-win :)

Madame Sparkles showed her excitement by laying on the floor and demanding petting.

Jane Lynch is awesome

We all love her on "Glee" already, but I've been reading up on what she does outside of her career, and this in particular was pretty neat - I don't agree with some of PETA's methods, but the basic message here is still a good one.

Stepping off the TV "grid" - update #2

(I did get outside and enjoy the wonderful weather every day this weekend, just so it doesn't sound like I spent all my time inside doing the following :)

Since my last post, I bought a Hauppauge HVR-1600 ATSC/QAM/NTSC capture card, and spoke with a friend who has been using MythTV for a couple of years, and he gave me some tips, including mythbuntu.org to get a customized Ubuntu distribution for Myth. My initial attempts at using the card with Linux were not great - after reading some forums, I tried out using some different firmware, using a modified Linux kernel, and updating some drivers. Installing the Mythbuntu distribution helped some, but I still couldn't get video that wasn't choppy and pixelated.

On Saturday though, all my plans got changed, because one of the other 5 computer's in my house (Erin's) crashed. After some quick triage, I was fairly certain I knew what the problem was - there was a generation of motherboards that had a motherboard "chip" which apparently offloaded some of the basic motherboard duties to hardware. The problem with the ones I've encountered (and read about) is that the small fans they put on these chips are very cheap and crappy and tend to go out easily. Usually, if your case has proper cooling and ventilation, you don't really need the little chip fan, but eventually something happens and the chip overheats and dies. Thus a perfectly good motherboard in all other respects is now completely worthless (thanks ASUS). Fortunately, the "spare" machine I had been doing all the MythTV messing around on had a motherboard with the same processor socket. It took a fair amount of Saturday to get everything all taken apart and put back together (including a Windows 7 re-install and all the apps) but everybody's computers are happy again. And, one of the funniest/weirdest things is that the 6-year-old motherboard/processor that I "retired" is now "un-retired" to be the backup server again...but I digress...

Back to the media stuff...I decided that without a spare computer, the next best option was to put the Hauppauge card in my super-power i7 desktop since it has more than enough power to handle recording a show and still being my desktop machine. So after cleaning up the mess from all the computer re-organizing, I put in the card and installed the software. The card definitely works better on Windows (usually the case with newer stuff). Windows Media Center did a channel scan and found all my channels, downloaded guide data, and I added all the shows I wanted to record. It says I have 43 hours of HD capacity, which should probably be good enough for now.

I tried watching from another of the Windows 7 machines and it seems to work quite easily once you add the primary machine's video directory to your media list.

A couple of downsides of using Media Center...one is that doesn't seem to let you use network drives as storage - for me that's bad because there's a lot more storage on the server. I have read about some hacks which allow you to get around this, but it seems dumb that they only allow local storage by default. Another (for me anyway) is that it seems fairly incompatible with anything else - you can use Microsoft media extenders like an XBox or other Windows machines to watch content, but it does not have a UPnP server or something that would extend universally to other clients (like my PS3).

Another advantage of having the capture card installed on my machine is that it can also take in other audio/video inputs, so I hooked it up to my VCR - I still have several tapes that I have not converted to digital, and the tapes have gotten degraded enough where some of the other methods I've tried to capture the video have not worked well. I tried one portion of a tape I know was among the oldest, and while the quality isn't perfect, it is good enough to watch - the sound and video all lined up and there was no choppiness. So I may be finally finishing that project.

Next on the list to try is Boxee - my friend Eric showed this to me on Saturday. It is a front-end TV "aggregator" of sorts - keeps track of finding content on the internet and in your media library. Does not appear to hook up directly with WMC, but has lots of other great features.

Random coolness of the day

I have a lot of experience with music notation programs over the years, and I find this to be incredibly cool:

http://0xfe.blogspot.com/2010/05/music-notation-with-html5-canvas.html

Completely web-based, written in javascript, nothing to install.

Also, another much smaller coolness of the morning - all those long hours of memorizing state capitals in grade school won me $.10 off my coffee at Caribou this morning as I correctly identified the capitol of New York as Albany. :)

Stepping off the TV "grid" - update #1

I thought it might be fun to document my progress in my quest for being completely off of the pay TV "grid" as described in my previous entry.

The experiment of keeping track of what we watch from the satellite is going well so far - in 7 days it's all been shows from the main networks, and all the shows are available online either on the network's own website or on Hulu. A few shows (FOX ones) are available online 8 days after they're released, but I don't know if that's a big deal given that right now we frequently watch shows weeks after they actually get broadcast.

On the hardware side, I have been researching capture cards that support ATSC (digital over-the-air) and clear QAM (unencrypted digital cable) signals. I've found there are only a couple of major brands, and will probably go with a Hauppague brand - they seem to have the best reviews, and support their products well. I was surprised to find that all cards still have NTSC analog tuners on them as well - I suppose many people still have analog cable signals. I don't really need that, and wish there were cards that just had dual-tuner ATSC so I could capture two shows at once, but the cards aren't that expensive, if I decide I need two I will just get another one.

On the software side, I spent some time after work today reading about MythTV to see if it is a viable option. It's often hard to read documentation and really get a feel for what a program does, and documentation for open source stuff is frequently out of date with the updated software, so I just installed dual-boot Ubuntu on my backup Windows machine and installed the MythTV package that comes with Ubuntu. All I can say is WOW. With a little help from the Ubuntu section of Myth's startup documentation, I was up and running in minutes. I don't actually have a capture card yet, but I was able to configure everything else and try out the user interface. Myth comes in two parts - the front end that you actually use to navigate and watch shows, and the backend which does all the heavy lifting of databasing, organizing, recording, etc. You can have one backend and as many frontends as you want that connect to it, or you can even have multiple backends to distribute the load of recording to multiple machines (in my case this won't be a heavy load of recording so one will be plenty).

But the features I was most impressed with weren't in the documentation, or were vaguely mentioned. I was worried that it would be hard to watch stuff on my Windows machines, since at best they have a partially functioning Windows front-end. As it turns out, some of the backend plugins work seamlessly with Windows Media Center software, which now comes with Windows 7. I was also concerned that my media "play-only" devices like the PS3 and the DLink media player would have no way out of the box to get to the recorded videos and that I'd have to somehow set up another UPnP server to accomplish this and have scripts to rename the files, etc. Wrong and wrong - right out of the box MythTV installs and runs its own UPnP server and has mappings for "by show", "by date", "by genre" and like 3 others. I went up and fired up the PS3 and it was all there. Awesome.

I'm having a hard time not just calling DirecTV and canceling right now :) But I will get this all working and make sure it does what I need for at least a month before I do that.

More to come...

The Worst

Thanks to friend Trevor for this one:

25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772-2/the_25_worst_tech_products_of_all_time.html

I would agree with most of them. I would actually rank the Sony BMG CD's as #1 - Sony has a history of blatantly thinking that they should be able to control and take over whatever device you're using their stuff on, and installing a rootkit on a PC is just plain criminal to me.

Cutting the "cord"

Have been reading some articles lately about a growing trend of people moving off the traditional "TV grid" (cable or satellite) to a combination of over-the-air broadcast TV and all the "free" TV available on the internet. I have some friends who have recently done this with pretty good success.

Yesterday I got my DirecTV bill and it was just over $100 after the last increase (3 receivers, the highest non-premium package, HD and DVR access). Somehow seeing the 3-digit bill was enough to make me really start thinking about doing this. Short of giving up TV completely (another idea that might have some merit), to make this feasibly work you would need:

- an antenna (something I don't have yet, but initial research shows good ones can be purchased for $50 or so)
- a broadband internet connection (which I already have and need for other reasons and is probably the future of everything anyway and worth investing in
- a "connected" house (wireless or wired - I have cat5e wiring to every room and gigabit switches)
- PCs or media-capable devices for each TV (two TVs have their own PC, one has a PS3 which is an amazing media capable device)
- a server/servers with UPnP capability (not all that necessary if you are using PCs, but useful if you're using something like a PS3, or a DLNA-capable TV)
- a computer with an ATSC tuner to function as a DVR (e.g. MythTV, Windows Media Center) - not required but nice to have if you want DVR functionality

Basically I already have everything except the antenna, and anything with an ATSC tuner, so this wouldn't be a great cost to me to get going. I did decide I'd probably pay some more money for a faster internet connection, since the connection will get more heavily used, and since everything internet-capable gets benefited from this.

Up sides:

- $100/month savings
- "investing" in what will probably be the future of TV/media with the internet

Down sides and considerations:

- Not every network/channel posts their shows online
- ESPN and sports channels not as available (ESPN3 does broadcast live streaming of many events)
- Will probably have to watch more commercials (for sure on live TV, most streamed media have at least some small amount of ads)
- May want to make more use of PPV options like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. to "fill in the gaps"

At least on paper, it seems like for $100/month savings, you could upgrade your internet connection, buy more movies, get more PPVs, etc. and still come out ahead.

The plan is to write down everything we watch for 2 months and see how much we actually use DirecTV (and note which things we can watch online). I also have to decide what I'm going to do if they try to offer me deals to keep me as a customer if I quit :)

I should note that I'm not unhappy with DirecTV - in fact I like DirecTV a lot. They have provided a valuable service to people out of range of cable, and have been the only force that stands in front of cable having an insane monopoly. I think it's unfortunate that they're tied to a model (as is cable) where they have to pay for each channel they broadcast, per number of users that subscribe, which is a dumb model because in reality, most people probably watch just a handful of the 200+ channels they receive. I also believe that cable and satellite, while good technologies, are inflexible when looking to the future of media. A good example of this was the switch to HD programming - it was a gargantuan effort, which required new receivers and dishes for everyone, the launch of 3 or 4 new satellites to accommodate the bandwidth, and several years to complete. The internet as a medium of transport, by comparison, is very "neutral" - everything is just transmission of data, the software on each end is infinitely flexible and upgradable.

Had to share these...

Thanks to Carol Boltz's blog for the link to this one (Carol is the ex-wife of the famous Christian singer Ray Boltz - I love reading her blog because it's so from-the-heart and personal in the things she talks about)

Anyway, the main link I wanted to share is a series of interviews on youtube with Michael Bussee, the original founder of Exodus International (in the 70s). Exodus International is an umbrella organization for some of the largest "ex-gay" ministries in the world. The reason I wanted to share these is because Michael Bussee is now one of the most vocal opponents of "ex-gay" and "reparative" therapy. Michael explains very honestly and plainly how he never saw anyone who actually changed and became heterosexual, and how much of the organization was based on wanting to make money or wield political power. (Michael and the other co-founder of Exodus ended up becoming life partners after realizing that these programs weren't actually changing people and actually doing harm).

I've read dozens of books and studies on this topic. The topic brings up all sorts of feelings for me. I am angry because it's another way that people are using Christianity, something I believe in and hold dear, to justify hatred, violence, and as a way to make money and garner political power. I am sad when I think of all the kids whose parents have forced them to go through things like this (I have a friend who is 21 whose mom made him go to this sort of therapy just 3 years ago - this kind of thing is it's still going on). And I don't know if I can articulate an exact emotion to apply to my feeling about how many people grow up believing they are going to hell, are a bad or evil person, and can't be a good Christian because they're gay.

Mainly though, this topic hits home because of the one experience I've ever had with a professional counselor. Early in 2004, I had gotten to a very stressed and anxious point in my life, to the point where I was making myself physically sick and tired with worry and anxiety about my sexual orientation. At that point I really had no one to talk to in my real circle of life (or at least I thought I didn't) and decided maybe it would help to just talk to a counselor would be objective, listen, and wasn't a part of my regular life. I spent the first half hour just trying to get comfortable just saying this stuff out loud, and the next 45 minutes telling my story, nervously clutching the bottle of water he had given me when we started. Going in, I was actually worried that this counselor would try and tell me that I was ok, that there's nothing wrong with being gay - what I'd heard and read was how most of these counselors were "liberal" and many do not subscribe to the ideas of faith or religion, and I was wary of that. After I finished my story, he told me, in a very authoritative sounding way that "we know that gay people are just damaged, that somewhere in there life they were damaged" and that I needed to work with a psychiatrist to figure out where the "damage" in my life was and start attending one of the ex-gay therapies. He handed me a brochure about Exodus International. I was so floored at that point I didn't even know what to say. I finally managed to fumble out something like "I don't think I was damaged. I don't feel damaged. I had wonderful, supportive parents and family, scores of wonderful role models growing up, was never abused" etc. etc. He came back with "well there HAS to be something" and said I really needed to look into Exodus to figure out what it was before I damaged myself even more.

I was fortunate that my problem wasn't low self-esteem or confidence, because if it had been, I probably would have bought completely into what he said, and I suspect that many people do buy into this stuff, because they're hearing exactly what they already believe - that they're damaged, that there's something wrong with them, that they need to be cured. You add in the religious aspect

For me, that experience was actually a turning point of sorts, because it forced me to start thinking about all of this more logically and not as emotionally. Once I thought through the fact that I really was NOT "damaged" (and that it wasn't just denial), I started spending my energy doing more constructive things like reading, educating myself, talking to people, etc. I don't want to make that sound like it was easy. It took 2+ more years and the blessing of some wonderful friends before I woke up one morning in 2006 and, for the first time in a few years, thought "everything is going to be alright". But that's another story for another day.

I'll say one other thing about Exodus International. They are an umbrella organization for a very disparate set of smaller organizations, none of which are held to any particular standard, set of rules, or governing body, and in many cases don't even have a lot in common with each other, other than the "ex-gay" label. None of these organizations are licensed or have licensed medical professionals or staff, and none of them do research into their methods, document the results and follow-up to see whether any of their "patients" actually sustained any sort of change or not. Regardless of your beliefs on the topic, or whether or not "change" is actually possible, this organization does not inspire trust or credibility on any level.

Saturday

It's Saturday morning, I have a full cup of coffee (thank you Dunn Brothers Tanzania roast), and I'm feeling blog-ish.

Week 2 of my cast being off - almost all the wrist pain is gone now, but I am still working on range of motion. From what the doctor said it would take at least a month, maybe more before I am back to full strength.

Erin and I have been playing a lot of DDR (actually "StepMania", the PC version that lets you line up all the games into one) for exercise recently. DDR is really a neat game - I do a half hour of exercise before I even realize it's been a half hour. And even though you get a score on every song, it doesn't really matter in terms of exercise because a wrong step expends the same amount of energy as a right one. I love insanely happy Japanese techno (my friend and Japan aficionado Lisa informed me they call that "Hardcore Happy" because the songs are like happy on steroids and crack).

In home IT news, I just upgraded my server to Ubuntu Linux 10.04 (code named "Lucid Lynx"). So far pretty nice. I also finally go through the 13 days of drive checking on my two new 1.5 TB backup drives and am in the process of backing up the entire server. So for those keeping score, the server has two 2TB RAID-5 arrays which means I can lose two drives before losing any data, and if I had a catastrophic failure on that machine, the 3TB offline backup on the secondary server now has everything. Still working on that offsite backup...I also purchased a new Logitech MX Performance mouse to replace one of my 3 remaining (7-year-old, ailing) IBM mice that are no longer made. I may get another one for work, these are cordless, high battery life, micro-USB rechargeable, and overall just nice.

In work news, the product I work on, after a successful GA (General Availability) in March seems to be well-received, and we have more work than we really know what to do with now. I've also had the opportunity to do a little side project using the ARM-based processor architecture - ARM processors are used in many smart phones because they are so low-power. I am really fortunate to have a job that gives me the opportunity to do and learn so many new and interesting things. This is another interesting article on ARM processors in servers.

In other news - well there isn't a ton of other news, but I am back to playing saxophone now after my 6-week hiatus, and will try playing small handbells next Monday. The year is winding down for most groups with summer approaching. We (mostly Erin) have been getting the seedlings planted in the garden - with the early spring, we may get a really good crop, some things are already taking off. Got to test out my new Troy-Bilt lawn mower Monday - having the self-propel drive on the back wheels (vs. the front wheels on my old mower) is going to take some getting used to, but the mower works well and truly is a one-pull start as advertised.

Finally, one of my new year's resolutions for the year was to see the show "Wicked" and in August we're going to do just that - we got early release tickets (thank you IBM club) to the show at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. Erin and I are both very excited!

I'll again put in my plug for what I think are this year's two best new TV shows - "Glee" and "Modern Family" - if you missed out on these, I'm sure the DVDs will be out soon :) Also very disappointed with the "V" remake - Hollywood, please at least try to have a creative idea or two. Please?

Glee

I just had to put in a plug for "Glee" his morning - Erin and I watched Tuesday's episode last night, "The Power of Madonna", and it was hilarious, and so much fun to watch them redo older Madonna songs from my childhood. It was so much fun that this morning we watched a bunch of Madonna videos - we all know Michael Jackson had a huge impact on the world of music video, but so did Madonna.

Also a big "boo" to the NFL draft - I do like that they moved it to prime time, but I cannot fathom how Suh gets drafted #2, and why St. Louis would spend the #1 pick on Sam Bradford. Nothing against Bradford, but he didn't play most of his senior year. St. Louis could have traded down and gotten him at #10 probably if they had tried. I'll make an early near-guaranteed prediction that Suh will be defensive rookie of the year.

Yakety Sax

So, I haven't played my saxophone since March 1 when I broke my wrist. It's April 21st, and I have my first post-cast rehearsal tonight. There are no risers, so I shouldn't be falling :)

Wish me luck!

"Smart" Phones

The phones are smart, the people making them I have to question...will be on my 4th Palm Pre on Tuesday (original + 3 replacements) since June 2009. The phone itself is wonderful, I love everything about it. Except the extremely cheap plastic power button with apparently an equally cheap spring that just stops springing back after awhile. I have the insurance, and with this phone everything is backed up nightly, so all you do is turn on the new one, log in, and in about 3 minutes everything is back. Just seems strange that they'd work so hard at making the electronics work well and the screen/case durable, and then make the power button all cheap.

Of course I read today that Palm is putting itself up for sale. No one knows where that puts the Pre....I pretty much refuse to get an iPhone (I'll probably eat my words), the Google phones look pretty neat though too. For now, free replacement Pre's will have to do.

In other news...day 3 of cast off, and it's great to have two hands! I'm supposed to be doing self physical therapy, and that's going ok. I can finally start exercising again and not worry about sweating inside the cast. Oh how I've missed DDR and Japanese techno.

This week was the last episode of "Ugly Betty", which I'm sad to see go, but they did a fitting finish to the show. I'd also highly recommend catching up on "The Big Bang Theory" if you don't already watch it, one of the best, most fun TV shows I've seen in years. And "Glee" returned for the second half of season 1, and of course it was fantastic. I'm also finding "Flash Forward" interesting, and a tearing through "Stargate SG-1" season 6, although I suspect all of that will slow down now that I can actually do other things.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend weather - for some people this is probably too cold yet but I love this weather, 60s and low 70s is perfect for me.

Blood

No, this isn't a post on the vampire craze.

I was painfully reminded today when reading my news feeds that I am not allowed to give blood. I gave blood earlier in my life (until I knew I'd have to answer yes to the question that would rule me out). There is absolutely nothing wrong with my blood, and blood banks are always running on the edge of being out of blood.

The FDA created the "MSM" rule back in 1983 at the time that AIDS started to be an outbreak and it was determined that blood was a carrier. And sure, in 1983, no one knew anything about AIDS except that people were getting it from transfusions, and that it was showing up in many gay men at the time, and the FDA did what they thought was right at the time to reduce the risk.

It is 2010. We don't have a cure for AIDS or HIV, but we now know for sure that's not a "gay cancer", that anyone can behave in a risky manner and can get it. So, to put this in perspective...a heterosexual male can have sex with a different woman every single day, and none of the questions on the blood donation pre-screen would turn him away from donating. We are, for all intents and purposes, relying SOLELY on the blood tests that test each donation and keep the blood supply clean. And that works fine. There's already another question on there that asks if you've had sex with someone who has or may have HIV or AIDS, certainly seems like that sufficiently covers "risky behavior".

The FDA changed the rule a few years ago - I was excited thinking I might get to donate again - but the change was from "any man who has had sex with a man since 1977" to "any man who has had sex with a man in the past year". So, apparently as long as you haven't been gay for a year, it's now ok (?)

Yes, I get that some of this is a numbers and statistics thing. But it's also a political thing, and it shouldn't be - it should be a scientific and medical thing. And it's 2010. And my blood is fine. And I could be donating 8 pints a year. But no one will take it.

What I do at work...

I love my job, but it's especially rewarding when I see how the things I do result in real-world benefit (30 second clip):



The product I work on is the technology used to do this...pretty neat!

Computer User Security

This is a topic I am very interested in and do a lot of reading and podcast listening in my spare time on the topic.

This article in particular was a good summary of the problems with end-user computer security these days. The paper the article references is here if anyone REALLY wants all the details (I'd recommend just reading the article unless you're really bored :)

Oh, and did I mention I get my cast off tomorrow?!? :)

Taxes

With April 15th coming up...an interesting article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=

T minus 2 days...

In just under 2 days I'll be rid of my shackles...uh I mean my cast :) Before and after pictures to follow...I am really looking forward to taking a shower without having to tie a bag on my arm!

In other news....please direct prayers and good thoughts toward my friend Jeff's kitty, he has a kidney problem and currently has a feeding tube. Now that I am buddy-ed with two of my own kitties (I say buddy-ed, because you never own cats, in truth, they probably own you) I know how precious they are to their human buddies.

I found a neat program (via friend Eric - thanks!) which is probably going to fuel my geek obsession with video compression - http://handbrake.fr/. Have already compressed a whole bunch of stuff with it.

Oh...did I mention I get my cast off on Thursday? :)

What's going on

So, I'll try to keep the commentary to a minimum on all of these, but I felt the need to post them for awareness...

First, the extremely political - the Virginia governor issues a proclamation making April "Confederate History Month" in Virginia...and completely leaves out any mention of slavery or that slavery was the major issue of the war. And then, when questioned later why he left it out, said something to the effect that "that was an oversight, there were several issues that were part of the war, slavery was only one of them". And, when he finally realized the trouble he caused, backpedaled and said "yes, leaving out a mention of slavery was a huge omission, and I will add in a paragraph immediately". OK...I guess I tend to wonder how leaving out any mention of slavery is an "oversight". He did end up fixing it...I'm all for remembering history fairly and accurately, which is one of the ways we keep from repeating it, but slavery might have been THE biggest issue in our country's history. Sigh.

Next, less political but more blatantly cruel...18-year-old Constance McMillen, a senior in Fulton, MS, was told she couldn't come to prom with her girlfriend, the ACLU stepped in, and the school board canceled the prom rather than let Constance attend. They also encouraged parents and students to put on a private party prom so that they could legally not invite Constance. Most of us have heard that story from a couple weeks ago. What follows is, IMHO, a new low for humanity. Seemingly in the face of more ACLU lawsuits, Constance and 7 other students (some with learning disabilities) were invited to what they were told was "prom" at a local country club. Meanwhile, everyone else had the real prom at a secret location. Attendees posted pictures from this prom on Facebook, and created a group called "Constance quit yer cryin". Really. This is happening in 2010. And now they wonder why they're getting such a backlash. One of my favorite quotes from the principal when they originally told her she couldn't attend was that "it would cause a distraction to have her there with another girl". So...national media attention and looking like the most backward, bigoted town in America not a distraction 1000 times worse? Hmmm...

And finally, on a lighter, non-political but extremely geeky note...an article on what the release of the iPad symbolically means for Apple...basically that "the circle is now complete" - Apple was the pioneer of the personal computer, and, they are now signaling the end of the personal computer era, in favor of a suite of smart devices or "information appliances" as the article states.

Champions

Don't know how many sports fans I have reading, but hey this is my blog, you can skip what you want :)

Monday night, the Duke Blue Devils played the Butler Bulldogs for the college basketball national championship. I started watching college basketball in 1991, the year Nebraska got really good and went to the NCAA tournament. Duke beat heavily favored and undefeated UNLV in the Final 4 and went on to beat Kansas and win the championship (really the UNLV game was the championship game IMHO). As often happens, you end up picking your favorite teams based on who was good when you started paying attention. I've followed Duke ever since then, so last night's game was exciting for me for that reason alone.

But...most championship games end up being mismatches and are no fun to watch. This one wasn't. Duke and Butler "duked it out" (pardon the pun) the whole game, the most Duke ever got ahead by was 6, and Butler took them to the end and had two shots to win the game, both ever-so-close to going in. I watched the whole game and was on the edge of my seat most of the end. This, in a game that nearly everyone thought Duke would win easily.

While the game was going on (as if that wasn't enough), I finished installing my new media PC - Intel Atom processor and low-power motherboard. It is pretty neat - no fans, no power supply (runs on a standard AC power adapter) and extremely low power (~ 2 watts for the processor). Great standby/sleep /wakeup capabilities. The old media PC guts will now be a backup server, running a couple of 1.5TB WD "green" series drives, much lower power than standard drives.

Easter - got to see the nieces for awhile Sunday afternoon, "grandma" brought them and met me in Maplewood, and we went to the park, and ate dinner at Perkin. A fun time for everyone (and some much needed naps for their mom and dad).

1 week and 2 days left with my cast!

Retired

I recently decided to set up a backup machine for my server, as storage is ever so cheap now and it would get more and more difficult to replace everything that's on there. So I had to do some machine/case shuffling, ordered some new low-power parts for the media PC I have, and moved the "guts" of that one to the secondary server case I have.

In the process, I am retiring the above motherboard and video card - it was slowly dying and really wasn't useful for anything anymore. The reason this is significant is because this is the board and processor of the first computer I ever built myself. Born in 2005, an Intel D875PBZLK motherboad with Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor, 1 GB of memory, a beautiful easy-open Chenbro case, and Windows XP. First dubbed "Vorlon" as a desktop PC, then converted to "Sinclair" as my first server, and finally relegated back to secondary PC duty for awhile. Hardware added/replaced, OS's replaced (SUSE Linux, then Ubuntu, then back to XP) this machine was pretty much on for its entire life and just ran and ran without problems, unlike other machines I've had. It worked so well, I created another identical one, "Shadow", for my mom's machine and she's still using that one today (for you non-sci-fi people, "Vorlon" and "Shadow" are the two warring factions throughout a lot of the "Babylon 5" TV series, all my machines are named for "Babylon 5" things).

I generally do not get sentimental about electronics, but this particular one will have a special place in my machine history.

April 1

No April Fools stuff for Paul - I got in a bit of trouble a couple years ago with one and I've sworn them off for awhile (and no, that isn't an April Fools, it's true :)

So, instead, a couple of geek/religion funnies for the day.

My friend Bill posted a comment on Facebook asking if people thought that Pope Benedict looked like the Emperor (and he does) but one of the follow-on comments was:

"Soon young Skywalker will be one of us, and the Lutherans will be crushed."

I think I laugh hardest when it involves humor that crosses between two seemingly unrelated interests in my life - that one qualifies :)

Similarly, several years ago one of my friends told me a similar Star Wars/Lutheran joke (it would work for Catholics too, if you're familiar with the standard liturgies):

"How do you know if a geek is also a Lutheran?"

"When you tell them 'May the Force be with you' and they respond 'And also with you'"

You may now return to your regularly scheduled April Fools Day.