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.

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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.