Maybe they should pass a bill soon?
A clip from the Thursday 2/5 daily show concerning the currently debated stimulus bill:
Here is friday’s related news:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/06/news/economy/jobs_january/index.htm?postversion=2009020610
Update:
Here’s a graph from the speaker of the House that compare the current job losses to the last couple of recessions:
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1683
Hire me!
I have fallen victim to a round of “force reduction” and am now actively working on finding work. To that end I added an html and slightly sanitized version of my resume to the site. It is located at:
Please take a look especially if you need an Integration/Telecom engineer with a Defense background. This will hopefully also make it easier for Recruiters/Employers to find me via the Google and Yahoo!s of the world. That’s all for now.
Thanks for your time!
Happy New Year
Happy New Year! Feliz Ano Nuevo!
I was torn on how to write up this post. I was thinking of making a list of 2008 in review or maybe a list of resolutions for next year but I threw all those ideas out and just want to say 2 things:
I wish you and yours a very Happy 2009!
And I hope kick this blog up a few notches in 2009 (when kids or work aren’t kicking me around)
A few extra “Mortal Combat” Phrases from the Announcer
(100% flash so may not render well in RSS readers):
SNL does the VP debate
Finally got around to watching SNL’s very funny take on the VP debate:
You down with LHC?
Be afraid:
I built myself a new toy (computer, that is)..
So I finally decided to do a complete computer makeover and now enjoy the wonders of PCI-E vs AGP land. Here are the results of this endeavor (Newegg links but actually mostly purchased @Fry’s Eectronics):
OS:
It has been a busy week at work so I am still tweaking and installing software but besides upping the level of eye candy, so far, Vista is neither the bane or salvation of Windows operating systems. And probably if AMD/ATI would actually release a better OpenGL implementation in its Linux driver (so I can play Oblivion under wine) this may have been a single boot machine.
McCain camp takes a pot shot at Dungeon & Dragons Players
Huh?!? Well that was my first reaction, too. Apparently McCain dislikes the New York Times, especially some of the articles that have been recently written about him. His campaign has decided to start comparing the Times’ editors to Dungeon & Dragon players who apparently all live in their mom’s basement. Shouldn’t they be talking about issues of substance, not having a pissing contest about a story told by McCain at an event that bears a strkingly similar resemblance to a story from an autobiography of a Soviet POW?
Several Roundups:
Wired
Las Vegas Sun
BoingBoing
MPAA wants to control your TV, and stereo, and DVR
MPAA’s SOC or Selectable Output Control permanent waiver request is complicated and probbably best described with pretty pictures like this video:
Here are some nice write-ups:
Public Knowledge
EFF
It’s Joss Whedon, and It’s “Dr. Horrible”
A musical about a super-hero and a super-villain brought to you by Joss Whedon and comprised of 3 10-minute-ish acts, available on July 15, 17, and 19 and disappearing from the web on July 20th. I guess there are some good side effects to last year’s writer’s strike.
Episodes available:
http://www.drhorrible.com
Trailer:
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
Testing Google Docs
I figured I would test out the ability of Google Docs to post to a Blog. It seemed fairly simple to setup the blog settings under the fairly self explanatory “blog settings” in the Google Docs “Settings” area. So anyway, I guess if you are reading this is more of a test of a post, than an actual post.
64-bit is the new 32-bit (AMD64 Ubuntu Install)
Never one to be satisfied with a boring working OS, I decided that since 32-bit Ubuntu “just worked” I would attempt to install 64-bit Ubuntu. Installation and hardware recognition went just as smoothly as with 32-bit Ubuntu. And my first impression of 64-bit Ubuntu is that is appears to be a little “snappier” than 32-bit but both blow away XP. After installation of the OS and application of updates everything seemed just as smooth as before with the 32-bit version including the restricted ATI driver. I then proceeded to again follow:
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com/2008/04/things-to-do-on-your-new-ubuntu-804.html
Things that seems to be a little different:
– Sun will not create a 64-bit Java browser plugin until Java 7 (sometime in 2008) so you will need to use the GCJ plugin (Iced Tea) for java applets, although there may be compatibility issues with some sites. Alternatively you can install 32-bit Firefox and all the 32-bit plugins you want. There will also be a subsequent Java 6 plugin to follow sometime in early 2009(See bug fix)
– If you are one to install w32codecs, they are not available by that name, you need to use: non-free-codecs
– There doesn’t appear to be a 64-bit Shockwave plugin although Adobe flash seems to work without issue.
– Again although Acrobat does install, the acrobat plug-in does not seems to be available for 64-bit Firefox. Of course, this is not earth shattering by any stretch of the imagination.
– (Is anyone else detecting a pattern concerning 64-bit Closed Source plugins for linux?)
Well, that’s it for now. I will attempt the wine & Oblivion install in 64-bit and let you know what happens.
Ubuntu – it just works
Well I finally blew away and reinstalled Ubuntu from scratch and I am now a much happier camper. I had done an upgrade from 7.10 -> 8.04 alpha -> 8.04 final release and my video driver was not in a happy place (could not use the restricted driver at all and any attempt to enable it resulted in debugging pain). Today I burned the Ubuntu ISO onto a disc and installed over my Ubuntu partition. The install went relatively quickly and hassle free.
And best of all everything just plain works! Huzzah!
I then proceeded to follow this guide for getting some of the non-default features:
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com/2008/04/things-to-do-on-your-new-ubuntu-804.html
I’ve heard of some relatively recent good developments on the Wine & Oblivion front so that may be an exercise left for the near future. (And if that exercise messes up the OS, I at least know its pretty quick and easy to get back to a stable system)
A ghost in the machine – IE password cache no worky
Every couple of months Windows XP decides that it does not want to remember passwords anymore in IE (which is the same mechanism some 3rd party apps like gmail notifier use to remember passwords). So I’m writing this more as a reminder to myself as well as a help to anyone who may stumble on this in a search. In order to get that feature working again you have to edit the registry, and in specific you need to get to the subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
And set the DWORD for:
DisablePasswordCaching
to:
0
You set it to 1 if you need password caching disabled for some reason.
Enjoy!
I know some cool people …
Dancing with the Stars, eat your heart out:
This one hits a little too close to home
The sad but true blog commentary:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/10/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-civilization-part-iii-the-twitter-years/
Direct link to original:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004480.html
Maybe I should have just twittered about this… 🙂
