Twilight Soul

Circuit City

AlanM — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:41:00 GMT

Michele said she heard Circuit City was closing, and wondered where we would then go to get our electronics. Turns out, not all of them are closing: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27515440/ But Best Buy seems to be hanging in there. And Papa needs a new TV....(read more)

Party splitting?

AlanM — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:26:00 GMT

Remember how everyone said the Democrats couldn't get themselves into a cohesive whole, couldn't stay on message, unlike their Republican counterparts (a la Wednesday Meetings)? Well... http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1463341016/bctid1866657225 Someone get that man a Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McMuffin. With black coffee and a hash brown. Stat....(read more)

Stupid Vending Machine Vendors

AlanM — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:53:00 GMT

Where I work, there are two beverage vending machines. My experience is that this is typical. One is for Coke. The other is for Pepsi. I generally choose Coke products. Whatever. However, whichever brand I choose, I prefer to have a reasonably wide assortment of beverages from which to choose. More to the point, I would really like to be able to choose a calorie-free and caffeine-free flavored beverage, whether or not it's carbonated. Here are pictures of the Coke machine: Typical lineup. Top...(read more)

The Accidental Tourist

AlanM — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:17:00 GMT

I finally finished reading The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler. I was not prepared for it.

Before I talk more about it, understand that I assume you have already read it. If you haven't, there are probably spoilers in this entry, although I'm not going out of my way to make them.

Although the entry is not available right now, I once talked about why this web site is named "twilight soul." It has a lot to do with my "inner self," which exists in a state of permanent sadness. I don't really know why, and it no longer has the sort of control over my life it used to. But there it is. Inside me is a fundamental affinity for melancholy.

So the protagonist of this story, Macon Leary, seems to have been cut from the same cloth as me. What was most interesting to me is how that shows up differently for different people connected to us. Ms. Tyler did a remarkable job with the characters around Macon. I could wish that the people around me could see through her eyes in order to see me.

Like Macon, I find that I frequently express strong emotions through some very unconventional channels. We both share a fondness for systems, although I suspect that this is a actually a coping mechanism designed to not have to work with emotions. And we have difficulty distinguishing who we are from who we are being when we are with the ones we love.

However, I'm pleased to say that this is no longer a mystery for me. I believe Macon made the right choice between Sarah and Muriel at the end. I wonder if this story reveals anything about my choices. While I have not had to choose between one of two partners in life, I do find myself facing choices about other people important in my life. I struggle with that. And, like Macon during most of the book, I am resisting any decision. I'm probably hiding my true feelings by expressing them through other channels. I'm not even sure which channels. Maybe writing in my blog more.

The part that frustrates me most about how I do this is that I feel incompetent at expressing the more positive emotions I have in a way that is accessible to those around me. Everyone I know says I'm "too wordy." Maybe that's how I do it. Maybe I do it the way the rest of my family does it, with not communicating at all unless there is bad news. (Weird juxtaposition, huh?)

I don't know. At the end of this entry, what I do know is that I will remember having read this book for the rest of my life, and will probably never want to see the movie.

Will it blend? -- the Man Cave

AlanM — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:01:00 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppc4gaAS_Q

Comment left on NPR blog: Defiance

AlanM — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:16:00 GMT

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/10/defiance.html

Srsly!

Phil Town on The Real Culprits

AlanM — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:48:00 GMT

http://www.philtown.com/phil_towns_blog/2008/10/the-real-culpri.html

A quick read of Phil's post might suggest that the real culprits of the financial debaucle we're heading through might be the subprime mortgage borrowers, and there is a slight insinuation that he means racial minority mortgage borrowers.

I read a little more carefully, and I think he didn't mean to imply that minority mortgage borrowers were the culprits, but that it was due to attempts to deregulate the bank lending policies so that minority borrowers could qualify for mortgages which they had previously been wrongly denied. As a result of this deregulating, and also because banks began aggressively promoting adjustable rate mortgages toward real-estate speculators and house flippers, we are now in the mess we are in.

I trust Phil's perspective, and want to make sure he's not misunderstood.

Wondering if she reads this blog...

AlanM — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:21:00 GMT

I'm going to buy Michele some flowers today on my way home. Just because. I'm not in trouble. It's not her birthday. She's been trying to convince me that I'm no longer romantic, but I don't believe her.

Special Commentary from Keith

AlanM — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's not so much that I lean left, as much as I think McCain/Palin are just so outrageous.

Transcript here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27054958/

Desperate Deception and Clear Evidence of Fox News Bias

AlanM — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:12:38 GMT

One of the headlines today is that Palin is going on the offensive, and she's doing it by attacking Obama's character, more than his plan or his substance.

Specifically, she's conducting fear-mongering (what a surprise...) by making a desperate attempt to associate him with terrorists. Here's her quote from FoxNews.com:

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

-- FoxNews.com, Sunday, October 5, 2008 http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/05/attacks-personal-campaign-calendar-ticks-election-day/

Follow that link, please. No, really, go and read it. Read the whole article. Notice that Fox makes no attempt whatsoever to either support or deny the claim. Rather, they let the claim stand on its own merit, as though it had any merit. The only thing they do is quote Senator McCaskill (D-MO) refuting the allegation (at the end of the article), but only after they extensively quoted Senator Lieberman (I-CT) as saying that a double standard is at work and that Obama's campaign would have made the same kind of attack if they could.

Now, please go read just about any other news site about the same event where Palin made her claim. I'll provide some links, but you should also do some searching yourself. If you're at a loss but generally think that Palin is credible, then you should know Palin told Fox News that she reads the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal (the latter is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which also owns Fox News).

AP: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2TC1ztefVzOiXeCNcmY7lIelBNwD93K34700
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27022487/
NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/us/politics/05palin.html
Wash. Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/04/AR2008100402126.html?sub=AR
Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-bill-ayers-obama,0,4485492.story
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/04/palin.obama/index.html
LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-palin5-2008oct05,0,118648.story
Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122315505846605217.html (start at 3rd paragraph -- and note that this one seems to skew almost as much as Fox News does)
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5957466&page=1
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/05/politics/fromtheroad/entry4502414.shtml

Nothing from NPR, PBS's News Hour (which generally leans right, according to FAIR), or BBC World News yet.

From what I gather, Palin's got the info from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html

That article made it abundantly clear that there is nothing substantial about his relationship.

Seriously, Sarah! Does this mean Obama could start attacking you because of your relationship to pit bulls?

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Bill Ayers, Fox News, media bias, fearmongering

Security Development Lifecycle

AlanM — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 05:52:30 GMT

“Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative is perhaps the most advanced and comprehensive application security program in the industry.”
“Managing Application Security From Beginning To End,” Forrester Research, Inc., August 2007

Security Development Lifecycle

This Biden v Palin debate condenses 90 minutes into 4.75 minutes. Faithfully.

AlanM — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:12:34 GMT

Although I would have like to have seen Lisa address the jaw-dropping part about where Palin says she wants to expand executive powers into the legislative branch beyond where Dick Cheney took it. That's just stupefyingly scary.

Technorati Tags: LisaNova, Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, Vice Presidential Candidate Debate, Dick Cheney

LisaNova Live

AlanM — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:09:00 GMT

LisaNova does the best Sarah Palin impression. It's in the same ballpark as Tina Fey's impression.

View my page on LISANOVA LIVE

I bet Karl Rove already knows this. Too well.

AlanM — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:57:29 GMT

I read this on The FactCheck Wire:

Fact-Checking Is Useless

Apparently, here is a tactic which, though counter-intuitive, works really well:

Tell a damaging, outrageous, but plausible, lie.
Watch as people wonder whether it's really true.
Wait for your opponent to vigorously refute or deny it.
Watch as people get even more certain that it really is true.

It seems that the technique works best on Republicans.

Why would Karl Rove (who symbolizes all the dirty politics that the Republicans play) be interested in a technique that solidifies his own base?

Because most Americans tend to follow the person with the most confidence, right or wrong (which explains why George W. Bush was elected). And by that, I mean confidence in him/herself, as well as the confidence of his/her followers.

This tactic is easy to employ; thinking of lies is just like, ... oh, thinking, for most politicians. One could say they are one and the same. But here, your opponent does most of the hard work for you when they challenge your lie. And better still -- there's no down side for you. Especially if the other side is silent.

Why? Because the Republicans are more susceptible to this tactic, and so they become ever more confident that the lies they believe are really true, and the average American, who's paying more attention to American Idol anyway, will just go along with the last most confident opinion they hear. Which will usually be a Republican.

If only I could think of a more effective counter-tactic....

Technorati Tags: FactCheck.org, Karl Rove, Republicans, Democrats, lies, Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan, George W. Bush, Floyd Allport, Milton Lepkin, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Kimberlee Weaver, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Peter Kim, University of Southern California, Journal of Applied Psychology, John Bullock, Yale University, Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler, Duke University, Georgia State University

CruiseControl.NET and CVS with pserver

AlanM — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:26:00 GMT

Wow. This was really painful.

I'm setting up CruiseControl.NET to build our projects at work. I'm forced to use a CVS server for the source code repository that has been configured to use the pserver mode for authentication.

It was easy to figure out how to set the cvsroot settings in the config file, but it was not easy for me to figure out how to set the password.

Turns out I didn't exactly need to. Here's how it seems to work:

First, you should know we're using CVSNT, so YMMV.

Run the cvs.exe with the -d parameter for your cvsroot, and use the login command. It will prompt you for the password.

And then it automagically saves it somewhere, I know not where, nor do I care. But I do know it is specific to the user profile. So, in our case, the CruiseControl.NET service will run as a faceless/system account, which will have its own profile. You'll have to temporarily run the cvs command as this system account in order to do the login command for it to save the password.

The documentation for CVS sucks really big rocks, by the way. All there is is a lot of reference material with no guidance, and a lot of questions from people who wouldn't be caught dead using pserver.

Burned by the same dumb problem twice!

AlanM — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:23:00 GMT

I hate when that happens. So I'm leaving myself a note:

http://www.thejoyofcode.com/Failed_to_map_the_path_App_GlobalResources.aspx

Notice my comment near the end of the comments. A zero-byte file in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys is what caused this crazy problem.

Model scale

AlanM — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:21:48 GMT

Much is written about model scales. Go to Wikipedia and Live Search and Google if you want to read what I read.

I've basically been going back and forth between O scale (about 1:48) and HO scale (about 1:87 or so), the two most popular model scales. I'm leaning towards O scale because I'd rather have just a bit larger area to get just a bit more detail into the models. That means the models will take up a bit of space, but I think I'll have more options when it comes to things like lighting and so on.

Let's see, at O scale, a 4' x 8' plywood table would give me the space to represent an area about... 192' x 384'. That's 73,728 ft², or about 1.7 acres. Now, that means if I were to try to represent Disneyland, I'd need boards about 40' x 40'. On the other hand, Bell's Amusement Park (sadly, closed due to stupid gummint people in Oklahoma -- and I can say that because I'm from Oklahoma sort of) took only 10 acres as opposed to Disneyland's 85. Bell's was a lot of fun (stupid gummint people!), so to represent it would take only about, oh, 13.75' x 13.75'. Or, if I use 8' for one edge, it'd be around 24' for another edge.

Hm. That's still pretty big.

Ummm.

At the O scale, the ticket booth I plan to make would only be 1½ inches wide. And about 3 inches tall.

In other words, the drawing from the previous post is actual size.

Yeah, okay, a little daunting, but that's what this is about, right?

At the O scale, I could do a fairly small but decent midway or carnival within about 5' x 5', which represents about 60,000 ft².

A 36' diameter carousel will be about 9" in diameter.

A 200' observation tower (unlikely in a haunted amusement park) would be 4' tall.

A 90' tall Ferris wheel (a "giant" wheel) will actually be just under 2'.

Those last two are the big rides.

A bobsled ride could be made to easily fit in an area 15" x 15". The diameter of the ride itself would only be just over a foot in diameter.

I think I can make this work. The hard part will be the lights and, of course, the detail (especially the lettering).

Oh, and the lighting. Those little subminiature LEDs can get expensive! Not to mention if I plan to do tricky little special effects like marquee lights or flickering lights.

New Hobby: Miniature Models

AlanM — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:09:49 GMT

I've decided to pursue one hobby fairly seriously. It's not a hobby I've ever really identified strictly as a serious hobby, nor exclusively. Rather, I've sort of mildly pursued lots of other hobbies instead: biking, photography, flying, music, movies, reading, puzzles, travel.

None of those hobbies have ever really grabbed me. And we recently bought a model rocket for Christopher Robin, and doing that made me think of what a fun hobby that is, and how I don't really have hobbies as much as diversions and leisurely pursuits.

So the family and I went to Borders, where I had in my mind to browse through the selection looking specifically for a new hobby that would grab me. I found a book titled "Get A Hobby" or something like that, and looked through about 100 ideas. I read the entire list about three times, still not finding anything that leaped out. Finally, I sort of settled on one: Balsa Wood Carving. And the more I thought about that, the more I thought of the neat sort of little things I would build.

And thus I was grabbed.

I won't be sticking just with balsa, although I'm sure I'll be using it. Right away, I started thinking of little Christmas villages and the like.

After Borders, we dropped into Michaels for some things we'd need for the rockets, and I got drawn to the Halloween displays. (Yes, they are already out. No, I don't believe it, either.) They had some neat miniatures that spawned some ideas.

I browsed on the web today for more ideas. I came across Department 56, of course, and got lots more ideas. But I plan to create my own original ideas and then build them.

I'll begin with a Halloween theme (one of my favorite holidays). Michaels had a Halloween amusement park theme going on, and I liked that, so I'm going to start with my own. I'll keep it simple, by starting with the ticket booth. Here's the first draft:

More details will come later. I'll see how hard it is to add lights and some special effects. I don't plan to put in any moving parts yet, but I'm sure I will later on.

I'm also going to document how long it takes to actually build this, and how expensive it turns out to be. The above picture is the result of maybe 4 hours of browsing on the web, thinking, and maybe 30 minutes of drawing.

Technorati Tags: Miniature Models, Halloween, Crafts, Department 56, Art

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, sausage, and spam.

AlanM — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:12:42 GMT

Because it doesn't have as much rat in it.

Here's the email I received:

-----Original Message-----
From: Customs Service [mailto:tefuquay@uasys.edu]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 1:20 AM
To: Alan McBee
Subject: Customs - We have received a parcel for you
Good afternoon,
We have received a parcel for you, sent from France on July 9. Please fill out the customs declaration attached to this message and send it to us by mail or fax. The address and the fax number are at the bottom of the declaration form.
Kind regards,
Christa Burns
Your Customs Service

And here was my reply:

From: Alan McBee
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 8:00 PM
To: 'Customs Service'
Subject: RE: Customs - We have received a parcel for you

Oh, gosh. A parcel for me! Thank goodness I'm gullible and completely trusting of every email I get, or I might think this was a scam.
Here's my condition: I'll send you my filled-in customs declaration, just as soon as you email me scanned color copies of your birth certificate, Social Security Card, or Naturalized Citizenship Papers, and current Drivers License (all those with front and back, please!) so that I can verify that you are a real, honest-to-goodness "Customs Service". (Don't you mean a Customs Service Agent?). I'm sure you'll trust me to protect your personal, private information, since you wouldn't ask me to trust you with mine unless you were a real Customs Service, right?
Whew! That was fun. Let's do this again sometime.
->A

Spam rats. Pish.

Open Source? Say what?

AlanM — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:46:58 GMT

I'm throwing away a pamphlet I got in the mail for O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, OSCON.

"Open Source." Two little words for a big concept: that code can be owned by more than a single person or corporation. That a lot of people can get together to share in the contribution and ownership of a single product, merely by sharing the ingredients that it takes to make the product.

Well, that's nice. It's had a share of success. There are certainly a lot of people working for hard to make it into a screaming success.

Only, ... well, I'm looking at the topics they cover.

Administration
Business
Databases
"Emerging topics" (this means "Open Content", "Open Hardware" [?? your guess is as good as mine on that one], "Free Software in Africa", etc.)
Java
Linux
PHP
People
Perl
Programming
Python
Ruby
Fundamentals
Web applications

Do you know what's weird to me?

Microsoft .NET Framework is free. You don't even need Windows. You can run .NET code on Linux.

Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions are free. (Probably can't run that on Linux, but I know of lot of Eclipse programmers who use Windows.)

There are a lot of Windows boxes out there.

There are a lot of .NET programmers out there.

There is a lot of (wait for it...) free, open-source .NET code out there.

What's the deal, O'Reilly? Did I miss some weird definition of "open source?" Like, "studiously avoids anything and everything to do with Microsoft?"

No doubt somebody will come and tell me its all about the Righteous Fight Against Intellectual Property and the Problems With Patents and Who's Really Going To Benefit.

Uh-huh. Only now they're arguing against something else than the basic premise of what "open source" was supposed to be about. I can, if I like, start a 100% pure Open Source project, with Copyleft or GPL or whatever, have it in the public domain, open it up for open contribution, blah blah blah, all in the .NET Framework.

Put it this way. Go to Wikipedia (an "open content" encyclopedia) and look up "Open Source Definition". Or click here. Better still, go to the official (?) site: http://opensource.org/docs/osd. Take a gander at Item Number 6: "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor."

I guess that's true, except that it's okay to discriminate against Microsoft's fields of endeavors.

Okay, okay, okay! Back the truck up, Jack! I know I misapplied the intent of the OSD. Sheesh! Get your little fingers off the "flame" button on your keyboard.

But here's my point. So, you're an open-source advocate, and you're all about free and fair use of stuff. There's nothing stopping you from including stuff that's built on the .NET Framework. You're not forced into any weird licensing thing. Microsoft isn't going to sue you, and you won't be held liable from any attempt to sue Microsoft for some patent-infringement thing in .NET. Are you kidding? Someone would sue each of the millions of .NET programmers out there? Can you say "media nightmare for the plaintiff" when they sue humanitarian workers, faith-based organizations, nine-year old kids, ...? Do you think other people are saying, "Good for them!" at the RIAA's attempts to sue illicit song downloaders?

And don't tell me it's just against corporate ownership as a principle. Sun only recently completed turning Java over to open-source. Microsoft's .NET Framework is based on open works; the CLI and the C# language are both ECMA standards. That was years ago.

So I think you need to own up. Here's my "open-source" contribution to your movement. Call it what it is: the "Anything But Microsoft" or "We Refuse To Acknowledge The Existence Of A Large Software Company Based In Redmond, Washington" movement.

I use Java at work because I have to. I use .NET because I want to.

But that's the thing, isn't it? I don't mind saying I can work in both areas.

What you you, afraid that if you learn a little .NET programming that you'll become an evil capitalist pig?

Whatever.

Technorati Tags: Open Source, Microsoft, Java, O'Reilly, OSCON

Laguna Ridge Town Center

AlanM — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:06:04 GMT

A month or so ago we got something in the mail from Elk Grove. A new development project is being planned called Laguna Ridge Town Center, and it will probably have a pretty big impact on us. I can't find much on the web about it... but I'm throwing away the paper and making a note here so I remember to go back and keep an eye on it.

Technorati Tags: Laguna Ridge Town Center, Elk Grove, master planned community

Procrastination is Watching This Video Long After You Got The Point.

AlanM — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:53:06 GMT

Technorati Tags: Getting Things Done, David Allen, GTD, YouTube, procrastination

Men's Health: 7 Habits of Highly Desirable Men

AlanM — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:33:00 GMT

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=guy.wisdom&category=career.money&conitem=879cc231e2762110VgnVCM10000013281eac____&cm_mmc=DailyDoseNL-_-2008_04_08-_-MainBlk-_-7_Financial_Habits_of_Highly_Desirable_Men

Just a glimpse of some of the silly things I think might be worth learning.

Talking about AddThis - #1 Social Bookmarking Sharing Button - Del.icio.us Digg Facebook Widget

AlanM — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:29:45 GMT

Now this is a brilliant thing. A single button which adds a "favorite" (or whatever) to your online collective list of "favorites" (or whatevers).

Quote

AddThis - #1 Social Bookmarking Sharing Button - Del.icio.us Digg Facebook Widget

Jimmy Kimmel: Unnecessary Censorship

AlanM — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:39:50 GMT

I'm starting to think that I should watch Jimmy more often! This guy knows funny.

I just today took a look at Digg. Yes, I know, I'm the last one to arrive at every party. This was what I found near the top of the Popular Diggs. (And yes, I know I'm just supposed to Digg this as well, right? Well I didn't.)

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Kimmel, censorship, YouTube, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Sesame Street, Grover, Cookie Monster, Martha Stewart, Emeril