Better blog than never department
2009-09-02 Bastuträsk and Skellefteå
Picked up at the train station in Bastuträsk by cousin Christer. He has been staying in touch with my mother for a very long time and stays at her house in Florida when he goes there to buy cars and parts. He and his wife Eva are waaay into American cars and he is apparently the local guru in Skellefteå.
We stayed there for several days including a trip with cousin Eskil (who taught Eva to drive long ago) up to the family stomping grounds somewhere around Ersmark. There we met a bunch more cousins, half of whom were out of work. Before that gathering we had lunch with Eskil and his wife Vera at their lovely place in Kåge.

Better Blog than Never department
2009-09-01 Tuesday
Arrival in Stockholm, seriously jetlagged, on the day that 100-watt incandescent bulbs became illegal.

Mamacita lost her grip on a sweatshirt she had just bought in Chicago (a closeout super deal) while getting off the plane. It did eventually turn up in "hittegods" (lost & found) and they shipped it to her in Denmark, eventually, for more than it cost.

I bought Telia SIM cards for our cell phones; selected that carrier on my cousin's good advice that their coverage was much better than the two others in the north where he lives. We put them into the Motorola W490s that were sold to us at a T-Mobile kiosk as being unlocked. Just plain unlocked. Ha. More on this later. (The difference between a cell phone salesman and a used car salesman? The used car salesman knows when he's lying.)

We were pretty jetlagged. Did I say this already? On the bus from Årlanda airport into Stockholm, due to putting on the seatbelt in the bus, my 490 came off my belt -- hey, no more belt clips, only loops -- hold me to this -- so we were down to just one nonworking phone, except for -- voila!! The Palm Treo 650 that friend Howard had given me. It is a great PDA, rather schizo as a camera (sometimes it tells me there is no camera) and reluctant as a phone. It does work, but after about 8 minutes it overheats or something and just goes bonkers. And it does other things in fits when the phone part of it is turned on. But it was truly an unlocked quad mode phone. But it was such a pain in the zad that I eventually bought a dumb Nokia for the journey.

(Later: The phone did eventually turn up in hittegods at the central station, and that hittegods office won't ship out of the country. I think I'd better call my sister's friend Tony. Later yet, did that, and he retrieved it and shipped is to me. Phew.)

Free Yuri
I find it totally absurd that Yuri Kondratyuk has been omitted from the International Space Hall of Fame at the Space Museum in Alamogordo. You could complain about this via their Contact Us page.

What boggled your mind today?
Mine was the Wikipedia article on The Woodlands, Texas

The Woodlands is a hoity-toity master-planned city near Houston. The boggling was due to this aspect of the article: while many Wikipedia articles have versions in scads of other languages, this one had just four. But which four? Take a wild guess. Give up? They are (in reverse order): Volapük, Portuguese, Dutch, and Haitian Creole.

Revoking Corporate Charters
A talk by Richard Grossman

This was on Alternative Radio just a little while ago. Recorded in 1997, though host David Barsamian didn't mention that at the end of the program (and I didn't hear the very beginning).

You can go to alternativeradio.org to get lots of stuff, five bux for an hour MP3 program, if you can't get it on public radio where you are. Check it out.

Cooking Vegiburgers
They go on chard usually, with caramelized* and/or carbonized** onions on top. I do the onions with safflower oil and a dash of allspice, and I don't have a rational explanation for the latter. It's about vibration cooking. (I once had a cookbook by that name, written by an outrageous lady named Verta Mae. "If you don't make a mess in the kitchen, you ain't makin' nothin' fit to eat!")
* my preference. ** wife's preference

Along with the whole thing we use mayonesa. That's the Mexican version of mayonnaise, made with lime juice instead of lemon. Waaay outshines the regular stuff. Best Foods / Hellman's has an orange top (and is made in Canada!); McCormick's has a red top. Check it out. Yum.

My wood stove does not have an IP address.
Nor does my well.

I have to wonder whether this technology stuff will be useful in the glorious future when all the dilithium crystals are used up, or whatever it is we're using to live beyond our means, energy-wise. Of course we are not energy wise.

Anyway, my BBC Headlines are supposed to be updating themselves automatically and they don't. I googled the problem and found the advice "right click" ... huh. For a Mac , make that control-click, and you get a menu including "Reload Live Bookmark". It doesn't work.

The stove works.

The well works when we have electricity and a solar pump might be a Good Thing. I also have a good-old-fashioned hand pump. Haven't installed it yet, but Real Soon Now ...

I voted for him. I'm writing him off.
Even though he's got the same middle initial as Jesus, he's no kind of savior.
Sure, there was exhilaration at the inauguration-watching party. We suspended our disbelief.
Maybe not the best idea, but under the circumstances ...

BBC vs. Wikipedia
You can probably tell that I read the BBC headlines that come with Firefox. Batteries included. Punctuation at a slight extra cost. Actually what I'm trying to say is that if you want to teach how people NOT to use punctuation, look at the horrible example that BBC puts out many times a day. The English have some bad habits in that respect, and us Yanks have some of our own. That said, there is a place to find good puctuation: Wikipedia. I was doing the wiki dance somewhat early on, and I recall the community working out what would be the international standards for English on Wikipedia. Very good work.

Of course you can find bad work there too. And when you do, fix it!

Google vs. Italy
On the surface that would seem to be an even match, but Italy is sniping various of Google's individual people. The premise behind the case, boiled down to basics, seems to be that Italy thinks that when some thug spray-paints dirty words on a fence, the owner of the fence is responsible. Duh. That is so stupid!!
(ref BBC story "Google bosses convicted in Italy" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8533695.stm)

Adult News:
Apple has apparently assumed leadership of the Anti-Sex League. See BBC story iPhone developers angry as Apple purges adult apps (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8530124.stm)


The founders of this new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition, did not allow this kind of behavior (First Amendment and like that) but did not envision government by corporations (well, some of them did) (although they did have some apprehensions about terrorism by government).

Related stories:
Women to serve aboard submarines (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8533414.stm)

'Date-rape drugs' are on the rise (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8533736.stm)

Giant clam-eating shark unearthed in Kansas (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8530000/8530995.stm)

Wavy Gravy:
Google Wave.
Check it out: http://wave.google.com/

The intro video has Lars whatsisname saying something like this is the first significant update to email since the beginning. Well, in one way, yes. In another way, introduction of the domain name system was a big boost, and given the size of the fishbowl at the time, I'd say it was close to revolutionary.

To Zen or Not to Zen?
What is the point of one hand blogging?

I've just been reading an article in Tricycle about badly-behaving Buddhist bloggers and a few aphorisms come to mind:
• Don't just do something, sit there!
• If you have nothing to say, shut up.

The next thing that comes up is how I have had, or I think I have had, lots of things to say, huge amounts, but to whom? There's nobody home. We seem to think that's a virtue in some of our discussions. If the quarterback throws a great pass but there's nobody there to receive it, is that a good thing to a Buddhist?

Stream of Unconsciousness

I think I had something to say but I forgot what it was.

Stuff in my barn (Mac parts) that I wanna get rid of
but I think is worth something so I've never thrown it out — yet.

A flyback transformer for a Mac Plus — Lifon 157-0042C
Clicker buttons (3) for 190/5300/3400, Apple repair part # 922-2702
Cover bezels (2) for 520/540, Apple repair part # 922-0789
Width coil L2 (3) for Mac Plus
Diodes (2) CR1 & 5 for Mac Plus, CR2 & 3 for SE, DL5 for Classic. Motorola MR824

No reasonable offer refused for any portion or all, and paying the shipping cost comes under the heading of reasonable. A pittance more would buy me some coffee. Email me at my spam-filled address: ebear@zianet.com

O'bama O'bfuscates O'n O'fficial O'ccasions

but hey, what did you expect? He's a @#$%&*^ politician, after all.

Watch this video and tell me if you can spot the point where the devil's cash register goes ka-ching.

Yes, I voted for him. No, he won't get re-elected.

The Nigerian fizzlebomber on the plane today ...
No way that guy could be working for Al-Queda.
He might be a sympathizer but that's all. The attempt was waaay too clumsy.
Of course it will make flying even more of a draconian experience for everybody.
Just delightful.

Avast! Stop, ye evil virus!

I like Avast for protecting the Pee Cee. Our town übergeek recommended it, and my experience so far bears it out. A couple of months ago I was visiting a friend who had a fairly decent machine, at least as far as the chip and disk were concerned, but he had two major problems. The first, insufficient RAM, was easy to fix. The second -- well, he had at least seven viruses (I really want to say viri), and that actually was easy to fix too. I downloaded Avast! and set it to work. It took a couple of days, several scans and restarts, but it seems to have gotten ALL the zombies out.

Avast! is free for personal use. This is not an ad. It is an unsolicited testimonial.

A tentative welcome to the new Cyberscrutinizer Howard Schmidt.

Let's see if he has what it takes to say what must be said.
Hint: it's about the elephant in the room.

Just today I was taken aback a little by this factoid: In November 2009 a mere 97 percent of all email was spam. If nobody else is going to let the cat out of the bag, I guess I'll have to.

While it's true that spammers are to blame for spam, that's not the only part of the problem. It is also true that Micro$oft is to blame for their crappy software. It's like swiss cheese, and always has been. Virus writers love it -- it's like playing dungeons and dragons, or super mario, or whatever.

Yesterday at work I figured out why our network was crapping out -- one of the PCs was infected and sending out a storm of I-don't-know-what whenever it was running and on the net. So far we've extracted eight viruses and a trojan*, and it's still raising hell whenever we let it onto the network. God knows what it's sending out, but after we unplug it there's still reverberations for a little while, probably error messages; when we run speed tests at about ten-second intervals it climbs from about half of normal speed to full speed in a couple of minutes.

*MacAfee has found these but it's not finding everything. Our IT guys had already started wondering whether they ought to try another brand of cleanser. Personally I'd recommend giving Avast a whirl. See separate post about this.

So. As we were saying. Mr. Schmidt has to do something he might find difficult if he is to get anywhere: come down hard and in plain language on the Micro$oft Problem. FWIW I'm writing on a Mac. And funny thing, the guy at the office whose PC is zombied has Macs at home too.

Legalize It
sez who? Well, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, for one. Or maybe I should say 'for many'. Check out their web site -- leap.cc. They have their heads on straight. I joined.

Why?
In case you flunked American History, or forgot, or whatever, there was this thing in the early part of the 20th Century called "Prohibition". It was an utter failure. It came about by way of a motivated, even fanatical, minority getting onto the ballot a measure for outlawing of alcohol, and an amused and apathetic majority not bothering to go out and vote because it was so absurd. Well, it passed. It became law. Serious law, written right into the Constitution. Of course that did nothing to reduce the demand, and a whole lot of American culture went crinimal. (I like that spelling for surreal subjects.)

And then ...
After a few violent years passed, the whole prohibition thing went into the trash where it belonged in the first place. We learned, or should have, that if you drive something underground, you turn over control of the situation to the undergrounders. And they're nasty.

So we have war ...
The Drug War. Are you as tired of this bullpucky as everyone else? Write your congressman and anyone else you think of and tell them to stop the war. There is only ONE way to do that. Take the money out of the picture. There is just one way to do THAT. Legalize. All drugs. You can regulate, tax, whatever, I don't care. Just take the criminal aspect out of the picture completely.

So who invented the drug problem?
The answer might surprise you, but it's quite clear: William Randolph Hearst. He was incredibly powerful and NOBODY would oppose him. There was no TV, and radio journalism didn't amount to much. It was all about newspapers. And any newspaper that opposed Hearst would find itself in an awkward situation: they wouldn't get any paper to print on.

When the measure for prohibiting a variety of drugs was presented to Congress, the major item in focus was cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana. There are worse drugs — alcohol, cocaine, opiates, tobacco — but the only one Hearst cared about was marijuana, and not because of anything at all to do with use as a drug. He was after hemp. He succeeded, and the votes in Congress were One Hundred Percent in favor of banishing the evil plant from the planet. It's such a menace, cripes — a single fiber can be three feet long. How could Hearst's massive timber holdings compete with that? Kill it!

In a column in Audubon Magazine in about 1999, Ted Williams wrote the best elucidation of the whole story I have seen yet. To find the story, google these three words: audubon williams hemp. Better yet, just click here: Incite

Onions

I'm cooking onions to put on the Bocaburgers. The laptop is on the dryer which rocks a bit. I'm sure I could adjust a foot to make it stop but not right now. Why is the dryer in the kitchen, I hear you ask? It's not. The stove is on the laundry porch. Long story.

Actually what this is about is my new invention: wearing safety glasses while cutting onions. I kid you not, it cut down the tears at least 95 percent. Last time it was red and yellow onions, and what the hell has happened to red onions? They're not sweet any more, they're hugely hot. Anyway there was still 5 percent tears. This time with part yellow and part white, you might expect a little more but it was actually less.