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Treesonously Bad Pun
A couple days ago I was out hiking with a group from work, including our intern. In a spot with an amazing view deep into the forest, I asked her to take a picture because I thought it would be fun to send it to the rest of my team at work and have them guess how many trees are in the picture. To make things interesting I added that "the closest guess may win a potentially valuable prize!"
Tim knew exactly the right answer:
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Six Days to Spam
I receive any and all e-mail sent to the arbyte.us domain. This enables me to use arbitrary addresses (in my domain) as read-only e-mail inboxes. If I sign up for something online and use a new e-mail address, I can filter mail based on the address they sent to, and I can also see who sells my address to spammers.
Last weekend I upgraded the operating system on one of my computers (from OpenBSD 3.9 to 4.3) and as I was doing that I also configured the system as a Tor relay. I invented a new e-mail address to be the administrative contact for the relay. The list of Tor relays and administrative contacts is available online (indeed, that's how clients find the relays) but this e-mail address has never been used anywhere else for any purpose.
Today, six days after I started the relay, I got my first spam. I have it on good authority that my contracting company is due a payment of US$15.5M from the Nigerian government. Awesome. :) Who knew you could make money on the internet?
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FiOS TV First Impressions
I switched one week ago from Echostar Dish Network to Verizon FiOS TV. Here are my thoughts after the first week of service.
The most important thing to say is that the picture quality is noticeably better with FiOS TV than Dish Network. Much less loss in the compression. That was the most important factor for me in switching, so I score myself happy. I also prefer the FiOS system's way of setting up and managing scheduled recordings. The search feature in particular is much better than Dish Network's.
The selection of HD channels is not very good today, but is supposed to improve very soon and supposedly reach 150 channels by the end of 2008. That will be nice when it happens… …
Cedar Rapids Flooding
This isn't my usual writing fare, but so many people are wondering how my family is doing that I think pointing them to the blog makes more sense than writing a bunch of similar e-mails.
I grew up in (and my parents still live in) Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Due to the recent series of storms in the midwest, the Cedar River running through the center of town is flooding.
Here's a live river level chart. The large gap in the data is because the gague was lost and had to be replaced. …
One Man With a Gun
Could have stopped this:
The violence began when he crashed a rented, two-ton truck into pedestrians. Kato jumped out and began stabbing the people he'd knocked down with the truck, then turned on horrified onlookers, police said.
Police confirmed seven deaths — six men and one woman — but they could not say whether the victims had died of injuries from the truck or were stabbed to death. …
Wrong Way Hearing
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee called upon many oil industry executives to defend themselves on the matter of high oil prices:
"You have to sense what you're doing to us — we're on the precipice here, about to fall into recession," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "Does it trouble any one of you — the costs you're imposing on families, on small businesses, on truckers?"
It's good to know that I can always depend on my elected representatives to get things completely wrong. …
Primary Thoughts
The nonpartisan ballot for the Oregon primary doesn't offer many things to vote on. Ten judges but only one race with a competitor, plus three state measures. Hard to get excited. But I'll try.
At first blush I thought the judicial race between Andy Erwin and (incumbent) Keith Rogers would be difficult to find information for, but then I found this story about the race that makes me believe it's rather heated. My eyebrows go up a little reading the comments about peoples' yard signs being stolen and vandalized multiple times. I can't quickly make up my mind about this race.
Measure 51 sounds like a sure thing. No arguments filed against it, lots of arguments filed for it, and an explanatory statement that makes it sound like it's all good things. But I read the actual text of the measure and am deeply troubled by Sec. 42 (5):
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Comparative Driving Redux
This is an update to a post made almost a year ago about a friend who also kept a lot of data about gasoline purchases. I made pretty graphs, because everyone loves pretty graphs.
My friend sent me some fresh data for the past year's driving, so here are some shiny new pretty graphs:
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Back to This Blogging Thing
Hi. I hope you remember me. I realize I haven't been so communicative lately… and it's not because I don't care, it's just that I've been so busy. Priorities. I hope you understand.
Anyway, I'm back. Let's catch up a little.
My vacation was great. Mother, sister, and friend are all doing well, and apparently driving each other only a little crazy. I've spent long periods of time with each of them and emerged mostly unharmed (although that is the subject of some debate) so I look upon this situation with some sense of amusement. If I may channel the Emperor for a moment, "everything is proceeding as I have forseen." …
Name That Bloom
My sister has a vine in her aviary that blooms this time of year. The flowers don't last very long — only a day or two — but are unlike anything I've seen before.
Does anyone know what this plant is called?
(Click the pictures for larger versions.) …
Surprise, Mom!
I'm currently on vacation in Arizona. This is the first time off I've had all year so I'm trying to be as lazy as humanly possible, but I thought a little bit of blogging was warranted in this case.
I'm staying at my sister's place. An old friend of mine is moving in with her, temporarily, but this involved moving from Iowa to Arizona. My mother came along on the road trip to visit my sister. Having my friend, mom, and sister all together like this was great timing, because I've been needing a vacation. I decided to make it a little interesting by keeping my vacation a secret from my mom.
I flew in around lunchtime on Sunday. My aunt picked me up at the airport and took me to my sister's house while all of them were out having lunch at the Iowa Cafe. (Yeah, I don't understand either.) I was waiting for them when they got home. …
Nerd Nightmare
I woke up a little after 3am Monday morning from a nightmare. In this case I knew that I was dreaming and woke myself up. It was a very nerdy sort of dream — it was about robots.
Robots who kill people in their sleep!
They were after me because I knew I was dreaming. :)
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Citizen Tickets Cop
Awesome:
Now, using ORS 153.058, Bryant — as a private citizen — has initiated violation proceedings against Officer Stensgaard. Bryant alleges Stensgaard was in violation of state statutes on illegal parking, illegal stopping, obeying parking restrictions on state highways, and illegal operation of an emergency vehicle or ambulance — the violations carry fines totaling $540.
Officer Stensgaard has received a Multnomah County summons to appear in traffic court on May 23. Meanwhile Bryant denies he is just stirring up trouble. …
TV Bleg
Are there any videophiles among my readership?
The combination of being lazy and having an abnormally low time preference mean that despite all expectations, I don't own an HDTV even though it's 2008. I currently have one TV — a 27" CRT purchased over 8 years ago. It's long past time for an upgrade. In fact I had been talking with my co-workers about doing this around the time of the Superbowl… in 2007! Even I have to roll my eyes at such delay.
So, I'm in the market for a new TV. On the technology front I'm biased toward getting an LCD. (The wrinkle there is that I'm sensitive to black levels and I don't want black to look light gray.) I'm not very price sensitive so I'm happy to spend up to about $3000 on this TV. Based on my initial research that puts me at a screen size around 52". …
Collective Punishment
When I was in elementary school, I got my first taste of collective punishment. Some disruptive student would ignore the teacher, and the teacher would respond by punishing the entire class. It turns out that this dynamic doesn't change, even in college:
Some professors threaten to confiscate students' cell phones if they go off during class. Laurence Thomas has his own approach to classroom distractions. If the philosopher at Syracuse University catches a student sending text messages or reading a newspaper in class, he'll end the class on the spot and walk out. It doesnt matter if there is but one texter in a large lecture of hundreds of students. If you text, he will leave.
Last week, when a student in a large lecture — in the front row no less — sent a text message, Thomas followed through on his threat (as he had done just a few days earlier). And he then sent the university's chancellor, his dean, and all of the students an e-mail message explaining his actions and his frustration at the "brazen" disrespect he had received in class.
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