Movies: Love Stinks

On recommendation from one of my new co-workers, Eric, I need to check out Love Stinks. Just a personal note.

Employment: Granted.

I'll make it quick, because I'm running on about 33 hours without sleep.

Just yesterday I took employment with American Summit Corp. / Wealth Spring Mortgage as their chief computer guy. It's a pretty wide ranging position, so I'm not really sure of the title at the moment. I'm basically going to be handing nearly everything for them that's computer related.

I've got to see if now's a good time for sleep, so I'll comment more on this soon. Yipee!!!

Considering A Name Change

Well, I've been considering this for some time now, and I'm not sure how I'm going to approch this when I actually implement it. I'm thinking of changing the name of Linuxwhore.com. It'll still be accessible by that name, but for reasons of presentability, I think that I need to go by one of my less offensive psudonyms. Therefore, I have purchased and aliased muchtall.com to linuxwhore.com. I'm probably going to keep things as they are for now, and over the coming months I'll be changing the titles on the site to muchtall.

Strongbad Email IM Sound Effects

If anyone has seen Strongbad Email Episode #59 "Marzipan", you've heard the IM noises that Strongbad makes. A while back I ripped the audio out of the Flash file. Some people have requested that I make them available and so here they are: Strongbad IM Sounds

Creating Looping Ringers for SprintPCS Phones

Even though I use all Linux tools to make my ringers, with the exception of pvconv.exe (Wine handles that), this isn't really a Linux tip, but I'll put it here anyhow.

I've noticed when I create looping ringers for my Samsung N400 phone, I get a small gap in the sound between loops. Up until now, I didn't know the length of that gap, so I had to guess and remove some audio from my master audio file to compensate. The sound files still don't sound right, especially with a heavy beat. So tonight I counted out the repetitions of a 2.5 second clip before the loop playing on my phone caught back up with the master playing on my computer. 50. So, if I'm cacluating that correctly, there's a .05 second gap between repeats of the clip pn my phone. So to compensate, I have to remove .05 seconds of audio from the clip to make it loop in beat.

Just thought I should take note of this somewhere, and maybe someone else could make use of that info as well.

My Wish List

Just was thinking about stuff that I want after I get a job, so I thought I'd make a list. Something to keep me motivated, beyond the usual annoyance of not having a decent income.

  • A New PC. Integrity, my workstation, will turn into my MythTV server.
  • Liquid-cooling equiptment. My current box is way noisy.
  • DVD-+RW DL Drive. Both my burners are going downhill.
  • A Linux-compatible Scanner. I'd like to be able to scan in old photos and send faxes from my computer. Probably the Epson Perfection 2400. SANE says they support it. Finding a scanner that did 2400x4800 AND was supported by Linux wasn't easy.
  • iPod. I'd like to be able to keep my whole music collection on 1 device.
  • 1G SD/MMC Card. For my Zaurus.
  • New SprintPCS phone. My old one works fine, well, except in fringe signal areas. I'd like one with 1MB or more of storage. Camera too maybe. Streaming internet audio would be good too. I'm even considering a Treo (sorry Zaurus).
  • MythTV expansions. Several new things for my MythTV box. A fanless TV-out card. A 250G drive. Another MPEG2 capture card, maybe 2.
  • Xbox and a mod chip. I'd like to use it for my MythTV frontend, if it works well.
  • Color Laser printer. I've got an old used LaserJet 4L now, and inkjets are horrible to keep maintained (clogged heads, expensive ink). Laser color looks so good, and the colors don't run. I was thinking maybe the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2300DL. CUPS says it's supported as well.
  • Nice Digital Camera. My current one is 1Mpixel and has no zoom.
  • Wireless keyboard and optical mouse. I've got a wireless set right now, but no optical mouse. Minor really.
  • The Seinfeld Box set. Seasons 1, 2, and 3. I hope that they still have the full set with the bonus DVD after Christmas.
  • TV. I don't have one, just an old Packard Bell monitor on my MythTV box.
  • Philips DVP642 DVD Player. Plays even MPEG4 movies.
  • Lord of the Rings Book Series Boxed Set. I've seen the movies, now I'd like to imagine them.
  • Bowflex Ultimate XTLU. Beefcake! I really want to have some workout equiptment, and as long as I'm buying some, it might as well be good.
  • New Car Radio. Not sure what all I want here. I'm kinda wanting tape, kinda wanting XM, kinda wanting CD, and kinda wanting MP3... all in one single-DIN unit. Pipe dream. I may have to settle for transferring my tapes to MP3/MP3-CD, or just get a nice tape deck with XM.
  • Dental work. It's been 8 years since I've seen a dentist. I've got a couple chipped/cracked fillings, and maybe a chipped tooth. My fillings are ugly silver/gray too. I'd rather have the white ones.

    • Impostor Update

    Dunno who this guy is (http://linuxwhore.no-ip.org/). Found it on google via this link: http://forum.autonet.ca/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?user=vossler

    Adrian Monk on Food

    I beleive most people don't like their food to touch, they just don't have the guts to admit it. -Adrian Monk, from the TV series Monk

    XORP: eXtensible Open Router Platform

    For several years now, I've been looking for a good open-source router distribution. Smoothwall comes close, but it's a little simplistic for a good Cisco router replacement. Now, I don't know why I've not heard of it up until now, but here's what sounds like a good option: XORP. I downloaded the LiveCD and I plan to use it on my router box here at home. I hope it's good.

    Fedora Core 3

    Fedora Core 3 is out. Yay. http://linuxwhore.com/heidelberg-binary-i386/

    A Letter to My Future Wife

    I've been wanting to compile this for some time, and, much like the last post, don't really have a good place to put it. In any case, here it is.


    A letter to my future wife from your loving husband:

    I miss you. Even though I have yet to meet you, I'm missing you right now. How I wish you were here. I want to talk to you right now about what's bothering me. I want to hear you say how much you love me. I want to pick up the phone and call your number and just hear your voice. I want to hear you talk about what happened today, and ask me when I'll be home. How I wish you could tell me right now that, despite my flaws, despite how broken I may think I am at the moment, you still love me and see me as your knight. I want to show you how much I love you, how you're such a beautiful, lively, supportive, and caring person. I want to enjoy the unity of beliefs we have on issues that matter. I look forward to how we can discuss the most personal and private matters and not be worried about offending each other because we know well what the other believes. I long for your loving support when I'm feeling broken. I look forward to coming home to our family, and being there with you, taking care of them. I dream about our home and the memories we will make there. It's almost as if you are here now, but not quite. But I know you are near, and soon we will meet, and no longer will we have to feel as alone as we do now. Soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

    Mad Libs and Mad Blues

    I've been in Madison for the past 3 weeks and will probably be here for several more weeks. I'm thankful to God for the chance to work, but I feel like I'm in the lions den here. It's easy to see how people get brainwashed just by living here. I'm having a hard time down here and I swear I've been fighting off a headache all week long. I think I just now figured out that this was why. I can't wait to come home. I just pray that I find work in the MN area soon. I need to find a safehouse. It's really really tough listening to all the libs around here feed each other what amounts to fodder for the next Michael Moore film. I was going to take off my bumper stickers the day after the election winner was announced, but after I saw how sore the nuts around here have been, I figured I should leave them on until I finish up here.

    On an unrelated note, I'm a bit down about one other thing. I should preface this by saying that this feels a bit odd, being that it's probably the most personal entry in my blog so far... I just found out today that another of my nieces just got engaged. My next older brother already has his wedding date set, and it seems that everyone I know is getting married. And to make matters worse, I swear that every attactive girl I even bump into already has a ring on her finger. I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about 50% of them: they probably would never even pass my first test of them being conservative. eHarmony has given me 1 match since I signed up, and she was something like 2 hours away in MN. Don't know what the deal is there. I know I have alot to offer, and I know pretty well what kind of woman I want to be with. Now, I can only pray they're still single.

    Techie Toolkit

    I got to thinking this last weekend that I need to build a better techie toolkit compilation CDs and CD sets. Basically get together all the software and updates that a dial-up user would spend days getting if I didn't bring it to them. Here's some ideas:

    CD1: Utilities

  • AVG Anti-Virus Free (w/ updates)
  • AdAware (w/ updates)
  • SpyBot S&D (w/ updates)
    CD2: Service Packs and Patches for Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2K/XP
    CD3: Service Packs and Patches for Windows NT4/2K/XP Server
    OS CDs:
    Windows 95
    Windows 98
    Windows ME
    Windows NT4
    Windows 2K
    Windows XP Home
    Windows XP Pro
    Windows NT4 Server
    Windows 2K Server
    Windows 2K3 Server
    Redhat Linux 9 (set)
    Fedora Core 1 (set)
    Fedora Core 2 (set)

    • Opie/OZ 3.5.1 Annoyances

    I've been running OpenZaurus 3.5.1 on my Z for a couple weeks now, and although I'm impressed with the progress made on OZ, I've found that this release of OZ is even less usable than 3.3.6. Now that I've been keeping busy with temp work, I've not had the opportunity to throw massive amounts of time at it. I think it would be a good idea if I at least layed out the list of problems I've run into so far, and then perhaps I can solve them and post the solutions here.

    1) Won't resume from suspend. After suspending several times, I can no longer resume, and I have to reset.

    2) Package Manager/AQPkg crashes. It'll crash randomly.

    3) Package Manager/AQPkg won't install to home. I can't install to /home in either program. It seems to be failing on symlinks.

    4) AQPkg is slow. It takes something like 4-5 minutes to display the package list.

    5) Can't sync with Intellisync in Windows. I don't have the error message offhand. QTopia Desktop syncs fine (but has reduced functionality).

    6) No unique Opie feed. The packages from the GPE and Opie builds were piled together in the same feed. It's hard to tell what packages work with what.

    Good Intentions and Flawed Arguments

    Why is it that every time I debate a Socialist on the Capitalism vs. Socialism argument, they defend Socialism with their good "intent", in the face of complete historical failure, save one example (so far), Sweden. But it's not good enough for Capitalism to work every time it's applied, save a relative few abuses. Let me say it another way: Socialism can apparently be superior even though it fails on a whole, but can find an exception where it worked. But Capitalism fails if even one exception is found, even though it works on a whole.

    Socialism is inherently flawed: It rewards those who will not to work, and you might have an idealistic few who will work anyhow.
    Capitalism has some flaws: Even though it rewards people for good products or services, sometimes abuses get rewarded for a relatively short time before the market reacts to them.

    The only exception to the successes of Capitalism is the rare abuse.
    The only exception to the abuses of Socialism is the rare success.

    I think I've said it enough different ways. Maybe one of them will get through. Well, maybe one more. As I like to say: The only flaw in Socialism is that it rarely works.

    RETRACTION: Divisiveness

    As a person who believes in the dutiful propagation of truth and challenge of fallacy, it is my responsibility to inform you that I have made an important retraction in my Divisiveness editorial. Please read it for further details.

    Presidential Term Predictions

    So, now that the election is over, and the concession speeches have been made, I'm imagining how things are going to be during and shortly after the next 4 years. Bush got the majority vote, something that hasn't been done since his father's election. This should quell the whole "mandate" B.S. that liberals use when their guy loses. So now that Bush has the road wide open for him, and 4 more years to get done what he needs to get done, here are a few of my predictions:

  • Reaganomics: Reloaded. I expect some real backbone out of the Bush administration backed by the strong Republican House, Senate, and even the Governorships. This is further augmented by the final-term factor: Bush doesn't have a re-election to lose. This will lead to some significant tax policy changes. I expect a serious push for some sort of flat sales tax replacing the IRS Federal Income Tax system. This will result in a reaction from all "classes" the US against the ever increasing confiscatory taxes that have plagued us for decades since the IRS's inception. People will finally see what they've been really paying, and will start to reconsider what they pay for. The final result of this will be a smaller, less tyrannical government, significant increase in business ownership, business growth, and more economic prosperity for all, even the "poor".
  • Gay Marriage Ban. I know this may bother some of my gay friends (that's right folks, even conservatives have gay friends), but the fact is that marriage has been defined as being between 1 man and 1 woman since the creation of the institution. To define it any other way is to open the door to destruction of any meaning of the word. As has been stated, we might as well allow marriage between multiple men and multiple women, or even between a man, woman, and an animal. What is really at issue are the "benefits" allowed to gay partners. Courts are trying once again to write law by re-"interpreting" (redefining) what should be clearly defined laws, and even in cases such as this, words themselves. If benefits should be allowed to gay partners, this is something that needs to be voted on, and have law created to reflect what the public believes regarding these issues. The first step moving toward this has already happened in several states. A gay marriage ban has received significant support in the states that voted on it just yesterday.
  • School Voucher Movement. Expect some sort of significant movement regarding school vouchers. It'll probably start with a pilot somewhere like D.C., and then possibly moving forward into the states in 2008. This is pretty dependent on how the 2006 Congressional and Senate races turn out, but I'm optimistic that the public will vote (more) Republicans back in after the economic boom. If vouchers take hold, we could see some serious movement back to the conservative roots of our country. Our children will finally get a decent and accurate education on the freedom, the history, and the heritage of our country. We'll gradually take back the power from the Socialist Elite and finally put it back in the hands of the people.
  • Ohio Conspiracy Theory: Starring everyone's favorite propagandist, Michael Moore. Now that cooler heads have prevailed, Ohio is clearly conceeded as being won by Bush. But that won't stop our resident Minister of Disinformation from rewriting history. Expect to see this before the end of 2005.
  • Hollywood's Empty "Threat". Once again, none of the Hollywood elite, those who had made threats to leave this country if Bush gets elected, will actually leave. Baldwin said it (again), I think Streisand said it, and I think Martin Sheen said it (again). But of course, they won't back up their arrogant promise with action. Wimps. Go home already. Oh yeah, that's right, the USSR is no more.

    So that's it for now. I'm sure more things will come to mind, which I'll post in part 2.

    • Opie and the broken Package Manager

    Just a personal note here, but possibly useful to others: http://www.zaurususergroup.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 . This might make my Z a little more usable.

    Anticipation and Disgust: Part 2

    So it's looking pretty likely that Bush will get 286 electoral votes (269 plus IA, NV, and NM). I'm a bit disappointed that WI appears to be won by Kerry. It is really close: 1,482,583 to 1,468,937, a difference of 13,646 votes. That's a little over twice as wide a spread as 2000. But with 100% of the precincts in, it's pretty unlikely that any significant changes in the numbers will come. Perhaps I'm missing the factor of absentee votes or something, but I don't know why they just don't call these remaining states.

    I had another encounter with an illogical leftie last night at the hotel I'm staying at. Oh well. I've been told that you can't change people's minds. They may be right if they mean significant change in just one night, but every little nudge helps as far as I'm concerned. That's the nature of politics. Baby steps. Lots of little movements and achievements until you finally achieve your goal. Both sides operate this way, it would be irresponsible for me to refrain.

    And now for some late-breaking news: Ive just been informed by VonCetric that Kerry has officially conceded. Hallelujah! It was a tough fight, but God's will prevailed.

    Pet Peeves: In the Bathroom

    I was just reminded of a new list of pet peeves related to bathroom behavior.

  • Typhoid Larry. There are people who just don't seem to think that they can spread viruses. They must figure they are walking antiseptic or something. You women would be amazed at how many guys don't wash their hands after handling their junk. I've even seen people walk right out the door after dropping the kids off at the pool. Disgusting.
  • Garbage can placement. After Typhoid Larry just smeared his fecal matter all over the door as he was walking out, I'm a little leary of even touching the handle with one finger. It sounds obsessive, but I figure that I've got to draw the line somewhere. Anyhow, a good defense against Larry's lost friends is to use your wet towel to open the door, but unfortunately, many places have the garbage can across the room, well out of throwing distance. Time to use the pinkie instead.
  • Mechanical Automatic Faucets. WTF was the inventor of these things thinking when he came up with this idea: Lets make faucets that don't stay on for more than a split second unless you hold onto them with one hand. How the heck are you supposed to rinse your hands off??? I suggest anyone who sees these faucets in use anywhere complain to the managers that the faucets encourage unsanitary behavior (Boy I really sound anal now).
  • Toilet Paper Dispensers. I swear, it's like they are protecting Fort Knox or something. I just want to get some paper to wipe with, but everyone has some idiotic design that makes it a chore to just get even a few sheets.
  • Hand Towel Dispensers. Speaking of protection of valuable paper products, why can't paper companies refrain from making dispensers that, while innovative-looking, just don't work. For example, those ones where you pull towels from a small cone-shaped hole at the bottom, or the similar ones with the ackward emergency feed knob on the side. They never seem to let the paper come through without ripping a 3" piece independent of any perforation. And if they do, they don't rip at the perforation, and you end up with a 5' streamer of towel. How about just giving us the regular automatic dispenser (perhaps with a bit more towel dispensed), or just the old pump-to-dispense types. They worked fine, why fix something that's not broken.
  • Sharing the Wealth. Flush. I really don't want to see or smell that.
  • Cigarette Butts and Burns. They just look bad. It makes a place look unclean.