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6月16日 The Vermilion Fish Festival - Beer Tents and Carebears
Picture from here Saturday we wandered up the Fish Festival to see what was going on. Over the last couple years it’s been a 30 minute walk through and leave affair, there really has been no reason to go other then it’s in our cursed Vermilion blood. THis year however was a different affair all together. As we wandered through I got grabbed into the beer tent from somone I hadn’t seen in at least 6 years. From there person after person I knew came in and chatted for a minute. We got to spend some time with Carebear88088 who managed to come into town for two weeks, and we only had spent a limited time with her before she left. We all managed to be civil and get along even though alot of the old rivalries between this person and that still exist. Sometime I wonder if we’re all going to grow up and if we did when did it happen. Not that it matters in the grand scheme, we all barely keep and touch and manage to get together for this one day like it’s almost a gathering of lost souls who they also felt a strange calling to gather in this town once again. 5月19日 NASA's Glenn Research Center's Open HouseOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/19/grc/
On Saturday Ghoulishcharm, Xie Lanthia, and myself went to NASA’s Glenn Research Center Open house celebration. They were throwing this in celebration of 50 years of NASA. We had been planning to go for a few weeks and we managed to make it. This is out of the realm of normality for us. Xie and I woke up early (for a Saturday) and got around taking care of the pets, eating a snack, and getting out the door surprisingly well. We actually left when we were planning on leaving. We drove an hour to go pick up Ghoulish and proceeded on the hour drive to NASA, all three in a Miata (don’t ask but I can say it involved clowns and midgets). At the halfway mark we stopped at Wal-Mart in Oberlin to take a stretch and compare prices with some stuff we were considering buying online. At this point Xie realized that she forgot her wallet. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but we needed government issued identification to get into NASA. Since we were a half hour from home we boogied back down there to get her wallet. While there I managed to snarf down half a peanut butter sandwich, a bag of chips, a candy bar, and half a Pepsi (meals for the road time warrior). After a nice stretch we all greased up and squeezed into the car again. We took the highway north this time and about half way there was a tremdous down pour. At this point we were considering that this whole fiasco may be a bad idea. We proceeded and decided we would play it by ear. We made it to the Cleveland I-X center where designated parking was and it slowed to a drizzle. We decided that the sky looked like it was clearing up and we would continue on this expedition. After going through the ID checkpoint we were instructed to wait for the next shuttle bus to take us onto the base. While waiting there a torrential downpour happened and we all got partially soak trying to stand underneath the overhang, but not trying to crowd people to much. Politeness versus being wet, the ultimate conundrum. After about ten minutes we were on the bus and driving over to the base. The first open building we wandered into turned out to be kid activities, no good. We wandered real quick to see if anything interesting was in there and there wasn’t. Moving on. The next round was trying to find bathrooms. There was porta potties, but none of us really like porta potties. We were at NASA we wanted to use astronaut restrooms. We migrated to the visitor’s center and managed to score normal every day bathrooms. I didn’t get to pee like an astronaut through, *sigh*. On a side note could you imaging the red neck shuttle that would actually have a porta potty in it? Ewwwwww. After the visitors center (Which had a Skylab capsule) we wandered into the wind tunnel, which can generate wind at three times the speed of sound. We saw the NASA bike. We went to the zero gravity research center (it’s really a big hole in the ground) and then decided it was break time. We hit the NASA cafeteria, ironically in the actual cafeteria nothing is freeze dried. We had had pop and a banana that cost a total of 6.00. I think I could get a better deal in NYC. Our feet were getting tired so we decided to skip some of the other buildings and just hit the hangar. In the hangar was a few proto type planes and battling robots. I guess the local high school robotic competition was happening that day in the hangar. There was also an inflatable life size replica of the Gemini capsule, bigger then I thought it was. Ghoulish managed to get in a discussion with someone at NASA over Pluto. We always thought Pluto got the bum rap, “The planet Pluto has become the planetoid plute”, what? It didn’t get smaller? Why did we have to change is designation. I guess the EU agrees with us. THe EU is voting to reinstate it as a planet, Americans don’t get the right to say what a planet is or isn’t. GO PLUTO! After the hangar we got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the car leaving NASA for the day. In two weeks we are are heading out to NASA’s Plum Brook center to see the world’s largest vacuum chamber. Xie wants to go inside, but I dont’ think they will let her. Ghoulish will continue his hunt for space monkeys, though he swears they are hidden away at Glenn Research Center. So there are no space monkeys, no floating in anti gravity, and no freeze dried food in the cafeteria. We had an enjoyable time and brought home some NASA swag to boot. See you in two weeks NASA I also made a Flickr Album of all the pictures I took.
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5月5日 Sometimes Obsolete Operating Systems Aren't Obvious
Sometimes things aren’t obvious for being obsolete in the world of computers. If you a Windows user it’s compeltely obvious that you are using an older version of windows immediately when you start using it. Whether the signs are when you sit down and see Windows 98 striped across the start menu or the older version of Internet Explorer 5.0 that starts up, you catch these things and it is noticeable. The same thing also holds true for Linux, but this is more of aesthetic issues that become apparent, usually graphic issues that are sorted out on newer versions you catch on the older ones. But what about OS X? My sister has been having a problem with her ipod nano she got for christmas. Itunes wouldn’t recognize it, she would have to upgrade itunes. Fair enough. Well itunes won’t load on her Operating System, which was OS X 10.3.2. Ironically the latest version of Itunes works on windows 98 and will work with the Nano. 10.3.2 is newer then Windows 98, but yet still is forcing the upgrade on the OS X users. Normally I wouldn’t really have a problem with this, I’m also not a nuanced Mac user. I can’t however tell graphically an immediate difference (once the machine is booted) between my sisters 10.3.2 desktop and my 10.5.1 desktop on my Mac Air. Do people just one day stop writing code that should graphically look the same from OSX desktop to the OSX desktop? I’m just confused I guess. Mac is supposed to just work, then please just work. I’m upgrading my sister’s computer to 10.4, then she should be able to the load the proper itunes and be able to sync her ipod. It’s just annoying. I’m not scared of other operating systems, I fixed a networking problem she had for months that my “computer genius” step-father had tried to correct but couldn’t do anything “because it’s a mac”. I knew there was a reason I don’t talk to that side of the family. Currently my “regular” computing devices include - XP Desktop for work, Mac Air Book 10.5 for work, Hardy Heron Laptop for myself, XP desktop for home games and movies, Windows 2k3 server for home. My micro OS’s include Maemo on my soon to be delivered n810 and Palm OS and my TX. At work I’m a main person to say that Mac is not built for the enterprise, they have poorly designed business software when it comes to managing a mixed environment. Now the argument back is that Microsoft should make tools to manage Macs, I believe for acceptance in the full enterprise that needs to be reversed. Apple needs to roll over backwards fitting itself in, I mean I have an easier time working with Linux in an enterprise environment then Mac. The ironic thing is I never heard anyone ever say “Linux just works”. For my stepfather that is scared of alternative Operating Systems, like the big scary Mac. It took my wife and I a total of 15 minutes in which she used her N810 tethered via bluetooth to her phone to google the questions I asked her. She fed me back the information after she filtered it and bang - working networking. If your not willing to work out of your comfort zone and approach new things, you will never grow. This means no matter how you look on the outside and what your resume says about you, like sitting down at the 10.3.2 desktop and not noticing anything different, you still need to be upgraded or replaced. At this point you are no longer truly useful except for some obscure things and can not compete in modern thought.
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5月1日 My Mother Must Have Failed Not Only Genetics 101 But Also Biology 101Original URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/01/my-mother-must-have-failed-not-only-genetics-101-but-also-biology-101/
I was randomly thinking about my past the other day and teenage mutant ninja turtles popped into my head while driving. Out loud I said (quite loudly out loud) I can believe my mom is so freaking stupid. My wife turns to me and asks what the hell I’m talking about. (She won’t argue that my mother sometimes lacks common sense and because of this her intelligence is somehow in question). I told her a story of something that happened 18-20 years ago. My whole family was driving back from my Grandparents in Greenville, OH. I enjoyed the TMNT cartoon, but my brother was the action figure collector of them. (BTW shout out to my favorite turtle Donatello). I being a normal pre-teen was trying to argue the possibilities of mutant ninja turtles existing (the way lots of pre-teens argue and defend things even when they don’t know the whole facts). My father explained that it wouldnt work at couldn’t happen. My mother trying to talk about sex gracefully in front of her 4 children (the oldest myself) asked my father what if “a lonely guy and a turtle..” My father cut her off right there and gave her the “If you are truly that stupid how do you manage to breathe look”. He then went into a basic biology 101 talk about how species had to be compatible to reproduce. This unfortuantely I think shut me down and my mutant turtle theories. That is until mutagen is truly dumped into the sewers, then we’ll see who is right on the ninja turtle arguement. But, needless to say a woman who was in her 30’s or just about, thought the humans and turtles could not only be sexually compatible (wouldn’t the guy actually have to get busy over the turtle eggs?), but they would also have viable offspring similar to ninja turtles. I must receive all my intelligence from my father, or my Mother must have got a skip year on her side’s intelligence gene. This was the same woman who at one time was talking about getting money from her parents (they deny it) to pay off the house when she was going through marital troubles. She had a grand plan living off of child support and possibly alimony. Now for those that don’t know child support was non taxable and she had lived that way for a couple years when I was a teenager. Her theory was if she got the money she would put it in the bank so she could deduct her mortgage payments and get a tax refund back. I think that even after an hour of my explaining to her that she had to have taxable income and pay taxes to qualify for a refund at all, and if you haven’t paid any you weren’t going to get money back from the government just because you have a deduction. If only my father was an idiot, I could say I was the milk man’s kid. When it’s my mother, I have to hope I’m my father’s illegitimate child with a nuclear researcher that died in a radioactive experiment after I was born, and he met my mother and they adopted me. Nuclear researcher….hmmm…I brought it full circle, I wonder if I have any turtle DNA in me.
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4月24日 Internet Deadman's Switch Part 1
One thing I’ve been working on for awhile is and Internet Deadman’s Switch. With all of my crossposting and media re-usage activities in the grand scheme this should be fairly trivial. I am sure however that some things will slip me up. We’ll start in this section of identifying the goals I wish to acomplish and work through some of the stages in part two. What do I mean by Deadman’s Switch? A deadman’s switch is something that is triggered normally to keep you alive. A quick example is the pressure plate on a riding lawn mower. The pressure plate must have weight on it or the lawn more will not start and if the weight is removed the lawn mower will shut off. So essentially one action cause another action to occur when certain variables are met. My trigger would be my death. If I didn’t verify if I was alive after a certain period of time to a program/website/etc. the a serious of scripts and actions would trigger leaving behind all the information I wish to impart on those behind me. Why do I want a Deadman’s Switch? This idea started in my head about 7-8 years. There used to be a website that had you check in once a month and if you didn’t log in it will send off emails to the ones you care about (or the ones you don’t). This gives you the final word and allows you to send of those things that might be important. I can leave my wife information about all my accounts and password, any relevant information that she may need and won’t be able to gather up, parting words to friends and families. I would also thanks to my current setup be able to post to all my social networks and make an announcement of my death. This I find intriguing and I’ll at least go through all the steps of implementing this (whether I actually use it and maintain it will remain to be seen). What would I send? I’ve broken down what I would want to send into four sections:
The trick to all of this is of course is reliant on a few things. The first and foremost being that I can send email after I’m dead. It also can not be reliant on my home PC (if a housefire hits or a tornado takes me out I don’t want my home to be the weakest link). Finally whatever script I use must be able to pull from an FTP site (for the audio and video). Once those can be accompished I’m fairly sure I can get everything else done. When would I send it? This is the other conundrum isn’t it? How do you net tell everyone you have passed on while you are still alive (that could be embarrassing). You need to pick a time period that seems suitable to you (every 12 hours is not suitable). I’m thinking either every two weeks or every month I would have to login and verify that yes I am still alive and kicking. The only problem this would really cause is if I’m kidnapped or held hostage. The chances of those being so minimal that it is unlikely so I won’t really take those into account. So to be safe I’ll set it for somewhere between 14 and 31 days. Another thing I would like to do is configure it to be staggered. That way I’ll be able to send a message to my wife warning her about the upcoming announcement of what is going to occur before it actually does. Then to family, then to friends, and finally to the Internet as a whole. This would keep it from being one big whirlwind hitting everyone at once like a ton of bricks. I don’t want someone completely freaked out when they see a new youtube movie of my me uploaded. So a staggered release would be the best scenario (if it’s possible). How am I going to do this? You’ll just have to wait for part 2.
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