ISP strikes again...

It happened again. The Idaho State police pulled me over. Its all quite simple really. I didn't come to a full and complete stop before exiting the NAPA parking lot. At first I didn't think he would pull me over but as he followed me around the corner I saw him putting his hat on. "Crap," I thought, "He means business." His lights turned on and I made my way into the nearest parking lot.

I still stand by my premise that police officers should never be allowed to ask if we know why they just pulled us over. If we agree to answer we waive away our 5th amendment rights, if we don't answer then they just think we are stupid.

I also don't think its very cool to have bad hayfever when you get pulled over. Then the police officer seems to think drugs have been taken and alcohol consumed simply because you have got red eyes. "Well," you think to yourself, "Officer you should lay off the doughnuts because your eyes are glazed!" But you don't actually say anything like that because you are the one who could be recieving the potential ticket. Darn those first amendment rights that get pushed aside while you speak to police officers.

So this officer pulls me over and guess what he asks? Thats right, "Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Uhm, No."

"You didn't stop as you left the parking lot back there."

"Oh, I just thought I could yeild when there was no traffic."

"No, you have to come to a complete stop. Do you have your license?"

"Yeah. Do you need my insurance and registration?"

"No, that won't be necessary" - This is when I took a huge sigh of relief. "Do you still live at 110th North?"

Now here is the problem with that question, I don't live there. I haven't lived there for over two years. Matter of fact I have moved three times since then. So what do I say? I don't remember ever updating my address with the DMV. If he runs my driver's license number will he get an address from Boise? I wasn't sure, so I took a chance. "No."

"How long have you not lived there."

"About three months." - Yeah, an obvious lie.

"Well, your supposed to update your address within 30 days of moving. If anything happens to you we want to go to the right house."

"Oh," and this is where I thought a ticket was coming.

"I'll get you a form to fill out and you can mail it in."

That caught me a bit off guard. He wasn't going to ticket me for it but was actually going to give me the proper paperwork to update my address with the DMV. Amazing.

I'm not sure how I did it, but I drove off without a ticket. That makes four times that I have been pulled over this summer. The thing that I am the most proud of is that I'm still ticket free. No moving violations here. Now that is some sweet action.

Pull Over!

In the last four weeks I have been pulled over three times. Yeah, thats right, three times. To my amazement I drove away from all of them with no tickets. To me thats pretty amazing. The pulling over is as follows:



#1 - June 14th - Traveling back to Idaho Falls from Heise Hot Springs. I'm doing 75 in a 65. I look up and a Bonneville County officer drives past me. I know how fast I'm going. I see it in front of me. It took him a while to flip on his lights and turn around but a few miles later I was pulling over onto a side road.

Officer: Do you know how fast you were going?
Me: Uhm, not until you passed me.

At this point the officer asks for my license and registration. He stood next to our car looking at it for a while. He keeps looking into the back seat at my sleeping child. He finally hands me back my documentation and tells me to slow down. Whew! I dodged a bullet on that one!

#2 - June 30th - I'm in the NAPA truck getting off the highway at Lindsey Boulevard. An old guy is going 15 mph down the off ramp. At the stop sign he takes his time to turn out onto the road.
With his slow wandering he nearly gets hit by oncoming traffic because he took soooooooo loooooooong to get out into his lane. My first reaction is to make my stop and then get out and around him as soon as possible. Just as I'm pulling around him and back into the lane I look in the rear view mirror and see an Idaho Falls police officer entering the road. He quickly turned on his lights and I knew it was for me. Ironically enough, this police officer also passed the old man to get to me.

Officer: Do you know why I pulled you over?

This question has got to be a violation of the 5th amendment in some way. For some reason we all still anser it anyways...

Me: Because I passed in a no passing zone.

Remember the officer did the same. Although he did have his lights on therefore making it legal.

Officer: Why did you do it?
Me: Because that old man was going ridiculously slow.
Officer: Where are you going?
Me: To deliver auto parts to Commercial Tire.
Officer: Was the time you wasted talking to me worth it?
Me: No.
Officer: Then don't do it again. Is your lisence current?
Me: Yes, do you need to see it?
Officer: No, Are you on probation?
Me: No.
Officer: Alright, slow down, relax and don't do that again.

Whew! I dodged a bullet on that one too!

#3 - July 9th - On the corner of Foote Dr. and Highway 20. I pull up to the stop sign, make an effort to stop while looking for oncoming traffic. See no oncoming traffic on an otherwise busy intersection. So I keep going. Again, rear view mirror, but this time it was an Idaho State Policeman. He pulls up behind me as I get up to the stoplight. I figure he is simply going to follow me for a while to make sure I don't do anything else. I nearly stopped right? The light turns green and I begin to move. Much to my disappointment his lights came on.

Officer: I'm pulling you over because you rolled through that stop sign. Can I see your license, registration, and insurance.
Me: Sure, (I hand him my license) I assume my registration and insurance is in the glove box. I haven't had to pull it out before.
Officer: Thats good.

He looks things over and mulls over it all for a bit. Of course he asks where I'm going and I can't give a simple direct answer as I have multiple destinations who need their auto parts. Finally, after an awkward silence...

Officer: Well, I'm going to save you $75 dollars today. Make sure you stop completely at all stop signs. You were so close to stopping at that last one.
Me: No problem. I'll do that from now on.

Whew! I dodged a third bullet on that one!


I really need to stop getting pulled over.

Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
--Douglas Adams

42 posts

Perhaps you wondered why I haven't updated my blog as of late. Well, its quite simple. I had 42 posts. And as everyone should know, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

So there you have it. Now I'm up to 43, no longer an answer.

Random Musical

As some of you may have figured out by now I've got an odd sense of humor; especially when it comes to random acts. While on my mission I would randomly break out in song during district meetings and as a result was unanimously voted "greatest district leader ever" by my last district. So when I saw this video I knew I had to share it with you.

The Mission: Create a seemingly random musical in the food court of a Los Angeles mall.

The greatest thing about it is that nobody knew what was happening.
Enjoy this latest find!

Computer Infants

As Clifford Jr. begins to approach his first birthday it is hard to miss his basic forms of communication. When he wants a bottle he will whine and then point to it when he finally sees it. When we wants food he will whine some more and then point again to his desire. I was pondering these actions today and I realized something; most computer literate people are computer infants.

Admittedly the computer language is not very developed as of yet. Computers have even had their own form of the tower of Babel, there are multiple languages available for use. But when it comes to everyday interaction with a computer we are simply infants. When I want to read email I first must point and click. For some there is whining before the pointing and clicking. When I want to download software I must first point and click. In order to update our computers we must all point and click. We can only communicate with computers on an infantile level.

As a result we have developed elaborate means to accomplish tasks. We can't simply tell our computer to turn on our favorite music or to dictate a letter for us. Instead we have figured out how to tell our computers that we are pointing at multiple files. We have found out how to communicate with each other via these infantile actions.

The command line interface is looked at as being archaic. We think to ourselves that because we can look at pretty pictures while we interact with our computer that progress has been made. What if the graphical user environment that we have all come to love and enjoy has been major step backwards. What if we decided to suddenly stop speaking to each other and only point and grunt every time we needed to communicate? Wouldn't that be considered a step backwards in communication?

Yet all is not lost. We still have the ability to reverse our major graphical blunder. I'm not saying we should discard it, as it has proved itself to be quite useful. Perhaps we should instead learn to communicate with our computers through a command line interface. At this point in time there are only a few words and simple sentences that we can use.

The bash, sh, korn, zsh shells are just a few options to communicating with our computers. Those of you using windows, a majority of you, will unfortunately not have this available to you. The lack of a good command line in Windows is really unfortunate. I have learned to communicate with my Linux computers via the command line, thus making some tasks much faster to accomplish. Batch image editing and processing. Batch file renaming. System and installed software updates. These are all things that I have been able to do much more quickly through the command line than I ever could through a graphical environment.

For instance, on a Linux computer it is quite simple to update the operating system and all installed software with a simple sentence written in Bash.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Linux users can also tell apt-get to clean it's room after its finished:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get clean

At first you would look at these nonsense words and symbols and think that it is not worth it. However, imagine the time I save knowing that I can update my operating system along with my office suite, instant messenger, web browser, media players, email program, photo editing, and photo organization software, all with a simple sentence. I know many people who are more than willing to grunt around the internet pointing and clicking their way through update after update to get the newest software.

Now consider that you downloaded hundreds of pictures to your computer from your digital camera. Also consider that the filenames do not represent what is contained within the picture. You can either go through your graphical environment and click every picture and change every single name seperately. OR you could speak this simple sentence:

ls foo*.jpg | awk '{print("mv "$1" "$1)}' | sed 's/foo/bar/2' | /bin/sh

Again you would look at it and think, "What crazy nonsense!" But I assure you that this crazy nonsense will save you hours of time. What if you needed to create thumbnails of all these pictures you just downloaded for your sweet new website or blog? What sounds better - Opening each file separately, resizing it, and then saving it as some other name, OR a simple sentence in Bash:

Convert foo*.jpg 180x110 *.jpg

I think I'll speak to my computer a little and then sit back and relax. I'll be finished with the thumbnails for my website just as you are getting started. Point, grunt, want, click, don't want, don't want, grunt, grunt, grunt, whine...

Imagine, if you will, that we could communicate with computers as we communicate with each other. Perhaps you wanted to listen to Bach's 3rd symphony, eroica. Lets say you didn't want to listen to all of it but only wanted to hear the 3rd movement? Wouldn't it be nice to simply say, "Computer, Bach's 3rd symphony, 3rd movement" and your computer would begin to play the tune at a comfortable sound level?

Alas, I digress. Star Trek technology is still far from being reality.

iTunes vs. Amarok

VS

After a few weeks of having an iMac I have decided I really dislike iTunes. When I was a Windows user I had always used WinAmp. It is not available on the Linux platform. In Linux I have grown to love an application called Amarok. It has most of the features of iTunes without all the clutter.

First of all Amarok doesn't want me to visit their store and buy more stuff. iTunes nearly insists that I visit the iTunes music store every time I turn it on. Some may call this a feature, I all it an annoyance. I would never purchase music laden with DRM (digital rights management). DRM removes the ability to play the music you just purchased on any other computer that is not "authorized". Sure there are ways around this but whats the point? If I'm going to purchase music it will be on a regular CD. Then I will put it on my computer myself. This not only gives me a hard copy in case I have hard drive issues, it also allows me to play it on any music player or any computer. So for me the iTunes music store is a waste of space.

Amarok does have ways for you to download music. Amarok connects to Magnatune who signs independent artists. Listen to the whole song and album before you buy it. You get to set the price for the music you purchase. What is it worth to you? Anywhere between $5-$18. Magnatune also gives their artists 50% off all profits. Compare that to traditional music distributors who give their artists $1 per album sold. In Amarok 2.0 they will introduce the ability to download music from Jamendo.

Music organization on Amarok is much more clear than in iTunes. You can organize your music in any way you want. By artist/album/genre/track/year/... Basically any MP3 tag. You can also browse through your music as it sits on your hard drive. This is very nice for those of us who like to keep our music organized and not in a big jumbled mess. Amarok also allows you to do a search through your music collection. And to top it all off, online radio stations are at your disposal.

iTunes does not allow you to browse through your music so easily. You can either search or use their simple Genre/Artist/Album sorting. When it comes to music organization and your ability to organize how you like it iTunes is weak. I also made the mistake to allow iTunes to organize my music for me. Oops. Now sorting back through all of it has been a major pain. When your talking about 35+ GB of music thats a lot of mess that iTunes made. My music folder turned into a jumbled mess. Yuck!

So there you have it, my feelings on iTunes. I don't like it at all. KDE 4.1 (Konqueror Desktop Environment) is currently under development. KDE 4.0 was released in January based on the QT4 graphical libraries. The promise of 4.1 is that it will be easily installable into any operating system. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. As soon as it is released I will say goodbye to iTunes and install KDE 4.1 to reap the benefits of Amarok, not to mention Konqueror and Dolphin.

iWeb. A phenominal looking dissapointment.

As you may have read I recently purchased a new Mac. It has been pretty nice. There are a few things here and there that remind me why I keep Linux around.

My wife and I decided we were going to put together a family webpage with all of our family pictures, a family blog, an about us page, and perhaps some videos. I fire up my iMac and open up iWeb. At first I was extremely impressed and exited for the iWeb css themes and styles. It is easy to put pages together and they look great. So I published my webpage to a folder and then uploaded it to my cableone page. There was a few major issues

• The menu bar did not function. There were no buttons at all leading to any content on the webpage.
• All pages were added to the menu bar. I don't want or need all pages in the menu bar.
  
• The pictures page, which uses javascript, does not work properly.
• I could not organize my pictures how I wanted them. I want to organize them by year and then by album. Not all albums on the same page. This would also apply to videos.
  
• The Blog feature only allowed for one picture to be easily embedded in a blog post.
• RSS feeds only work with an Apple .Mac account.
  

After a little research I found out that these problems do not exist if you use the .Mac (dot mac) web hosting provided by Apple. I fireup Firefox and head on over to Apple's website to learn more about .Mac . The .Mac account will cost someone just under $100 per year. For this price your web page will work as it is designed to in iWeb. But what really kills .Mac is that it comes with a very dismal 10GB of storage. Just for comparison Google mail gives 6.5GB just for e-mail! So because I have 14GB of pictures alone .Mac is out of the question.

After looking around at the most "top rated" hosting services I have found that Bluehost or Hostmonster are considered the most user friendly and best priced. They both happen to be owned by the same company. These web hosts offer 1,500GB of storage, a free domain name, hosting unlimited domains, POP3 and IMAP email, FTP accounts, web based email, secure shell access (SSH - I love ssh), log files, site stats, wordpress, PHP5, poll and survey software...the list goes on and only for the price of roughly $160 for two years.
As you can see, compared to .Mac the features are like a gang of thugs beating the crap out of some artsy fartsy. The only drawback this has compared to .Mac is the amount of bandwidth transfer data per month. HostMonster only gives 15,000GB of data transfer every month (which is still a phenomenal amount). Apple's .Mac doesn't specify the amount of data transfer allowed monthly so I assume it is unlimited.

So because iWeb depends so heavily on being tied into a .Mac account it makes itself useless to me. This is why iWeb is such a great looking disappointment. I even decided to dig into the iWeb html and css files to modify it. I was in for a huge surprise. iWeb's generated css and html are terrible. Good luck on figuring out what code displays what image or text. So I leave iWeb with a terrible distaste for a part of the iLife suite.

So long iWeb, and adieu.

iMac

The iMac is here! My setup has completely worked. OS X is pretty darn slick.

Three years ago Linux made a giant leap forward with XGL and Compiz. This added amazing desktop effects: a desktop cube, wobbly windows, water on the desktop... So when I first saw Windows Vista I thought, well thats spiffy isn't it? Then I plugged a usb thumb drive into it. That was the "WOW" effect for me. I was completely in shock that it had to install software for my new hardware, a simple usb drive. Its a usb drive! Just let me look at it! Then I felt like I was on a never ending elevator. (cue elevator music)... It just never stopped and I never got to look at my usb drive. So I go back to Linux and feel at home when my usb drive just shows up. It just worked.

Now I have taken another step out of my element and I sit here in OS X. When I first booted OS X it was more than a "WOW" effect. It was complete admiration. It was nice, beautiful, and slick. The user interface is well out of my element but it shouldn't take me long to get used to it. I am not so impressed with the way the mouse moves across the screen but after some changes in the preferences window I like it much more. I just wished it would work like it does in Linux. Flick your wrist and the mouse is across the screen. I hate having to lift the mouse up and bring it back to the other side of the mouse pad to finally get it where I want it. When it comes down to it I'm still impressed with OS X Leopard.

Anyways, here is the picture of my new computer station!

As you can tell my Linux box is well out of the way. I even hung the speakers so they were out of the way. This setup has satisfied the demands of the all powerful spousal unit.

So we bought an Apple iMac. Yeah, we are officially done with Windows, completely. For a long time now I have been using a Linux operating system and I have really enjoyed it. However, Linux is a little behind in the video world. Well, I should say the video world for the average desktop user. Unless you can shell out the cash for Maya (used by Pixar) or Autodesk Smoke (used by a miriad of companies) then your pretty much out of luck for a good quality video editor. We tried a number of video editors for Windows as well but preferred the simplicity of iMovie '06. Don't worry, iMovie '06 can be installed along side iMovie '08 which comes with Leopard. I also really like iDVD. If we really get into video editing pretty deep we may splurge again and purchase Final Cut Express, which looks pretty darn slick. And to top it all off Mac OS X is Unix based! How cool is that! That means I can still use a terminal to use programs like Imagemagik! Woot!

I told you that so I can tell you this next part. As I mentioned before I've been running Linux, and I really like it. However, the all powerful spousal unit has deemed it necessary to put the new iMac in place of my Linux box. This is very frightening to me. This computer may be old and is certainly showing signs of it's age, but it is still very useful. It contains a myriad of open source software that is versatile as well as fun. Besides, I'm still wanting to keep up with the latest and greatest of Linux distros. So instead of allowing Share to banish my Linux box I have come up with a solution.

So here is my solution to my problem. The new iMac will sit where that mess is on my desk. I'm pretty sure I'll move it around a little. My printer and computer tower will switch places. It will be a pretty sweet setup when its all done.

This is NAPA

I've been working at NAPA Auto Parts for some time. I did eight whole months with them in Boise and now I'm working for them in Idaho Falls. The store manager in Idaho Falls comes across as an unlikeable guy. All the workers know that deep down he is a bald cuddly teddy bear. His demeanor has inspired this badly edited scene from the movie 300.

Global Warming - The new atheist religion

My blog has stayed away from things that are political in nature. Now I think it may be time to at least put some thoughts out there about global warming. I completely expect people to tell me I'm going to global warming hell. And I'm OK with that.

Global Warming has turned into the new atheist religion. There is a god. To them it is Mother Earth. There is sin. To them it is carbon emissions. There are negative consequences to this sin... we are on the path to destroy the Earth and as a result Earth will destroy us through terrible hurricanes and tsunamis. And with all religions, those who disagree are Heretics. As you read this blog entry you will begin to realize that I am one such Heretic.

Ironically enough there is even a way you can obtain an indulgence and forgiveness for your carbon sins. You have the opportunity to purchase carbon credits. Sounds a bit like the Catholic church before Martin Luther tacked his grievances to their door. By donating money to fight global warming you are able to continue living your current life guilt free. Carbonfund.org is one such place that will sell you the needed indulgence. For a mere $49.91 I can offset the carbon footprint of my SUV for an entire year. $648.82 will cover me for the life of the car. Sounds all fine and dandy. I still get to go out and do my carbon sinning with the knowledge that my money has removed me from that same carbon sin. Carbonfund.org will spend your money working to fight global warming or they will retire those carbon emissions. The issue is that Carbonfund.org does not explain how they will spend your money to fight global warming or how they can single handedly retire carbon.

There is a direct correlation between C02 and temperature of the Earth. It has been proven. Al Gore makes use of this fact to say that the more C02 the higher the temperature. The biggest issue I see with this thought is that the earth is carbon based. Everything on the earth is made of carbon. Plants contain carbon. As well as lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my! All vegetation, all animals, all man made objects, and all men. Yep, Thats right. YOU have carbon in your body. Therefore you are an abomination to the earth and must be smitten. The only problem is that you will continue to sin in death as your body decays and emits more C02 into the atmosphere. After a few years we could do some carbon dating to find that you lived with idiots.

What if C02 was not the cause? What if higher C02 levels was an effect? It is possible that C02 gets trapped in the ice when it freezes and is released when it melts. Perhaps there could be something else besides a single element that would cause the temperature of the earth to rise slightly. Lets leave the earth a few million miles behind us and take a journey to the sun. Ah, the sun. The great giver of heat and light, the sustainer of life. Wouldn't it be odd if the sun were to have more effect on the Earth than the men that inhabited it? On NOAA's web page there is a very interesting and informative article about sun spots. According to this article there was a period of time from 1645 to 1715 of sunspot inactivity. This time period is known as the "Little Ice Age" because the temperature of the earth fell dramatically. Heating and cooling is increasingly correlated with sun spot activity. C02 emissions, especially from man, would have little effect on the climate. Volcanoes emit more C02 than we could ever dream of.

Global warming has got us all worried about the polar bears. By association of the food chain we must also be worried about penguins and seals. The ice is falling away from the glaciers of both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This is an obvious in your face argument for global climate change. Perhaps it is. But if the ice has been melting at this phenomenal rate for so long why do we still have glaciers in these places at all? Maybe we could simply point to the seasons of the earth on this one. Spring runoff is a pretty compelling argument for melting ice. Spring is also an effect of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Maybe the sun has something to do with it? Have you ever tried to book a cruise to the North Pole in the winter? You can only take an Alaska cruise during the months of April through October. The winter months of November through March are not available for a journey to the edge of the glaciers. Could this be that those months are much colder up north and there is too much ice to move a ship around in? Think about it rationally.

If our sun is the root cause of global climate change, then what can we do about it? Nothing. The earth will naturally warm and cool on a cycle of its own. The earth was warmer by nearly ten degrees Celsius [about 19(f)] during the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods of the Earth's existence. The same goes for the Triassic and Jurassic periods. And the same for the... you get the point. The fact of the matter is that the Earth's temperature will rise and fall. On a smaller level we have been going back and forth about the Earth's temperature for over 100 years. In a special report from Business and Media we are informed of concern about the Earth's temperature when Grover Cleveland was president right before the turn of the century. The earth cooled in the 1920's and was warming again in the 1950's. But who could forget the global cooling scare of the 1970's? Now we are again entrenched in the Earth's temperature as it rises slightly. There is loads of information out there. Just Google "global cooling" instead of "global warming".

These are just a few points about global warming. It would take me hours to cover all the causes of the Earth's temperature warming a few degrees. It would take even longer to discuss all the bullheaded ideas for combating this one degree Celsius. To completely understand this position watch The Great Global Warming Swindle: