College football season is upon us, and Nevada finally - finally - had a decent home opener.  Sure, we had to schedule Grambling State to pull it off, but pull it off we did.  Thankfully, this will help soothe the nearly inevitable sting that will grab us all by the rectal regions when Texas Tech comes to town.  That said, the Red Raiders were apparently rather sloppy against Eastern Washington, committing a school record eighteen penalties to start the season, but, then again, it’s not like we played a perfect first game, either, so I’m not going to hold out much hope.  Still, if this is how they react after a semi-interesting game against an FCS opponent, I really, really hope I get to come back next week and see how they react after a good game against a real(-ish) opponent.

When I go to a Nevada football game, I usually sit in the south end zone - it’s known to be a little rowdier, a little crazier, and a little more spirited than the rest of general admission, which is absolutely perfect for letting off a little steam.  Unfortunately, this street runs both ways, which means that, every once in a while, I’ll end up sitting near some people that collectively don’t share more than two brain cells to rub together for heat.  Last night, I must’ve been going through the “Do Not Enter” lane of that street, because, lo and behold, a small cluster of such asstards decided to take root just behind me.

Ah, but David, what would make such people asstards, you may be asking yourself.  Perhaps you’re being unjust, or at least a little unkind?

No.

1. When attending a football game, do not spend five minutes picking on your friend’s t-shirt because it’s not name brand. For the love of all that is good and holy in these United States, do not do this if you actually possess a pair of testicles. I mean, c’mon - if you’re a guy, should you really be going to a football game to ridicule somebody’s fashion sense?
2. When somebody in front of you decides to actually call you on the insipidity of going to what should effectively count as “Man Church”, only to listen to a bunch of drooling frat boys start ridiculing each other’s fashion sense like a piss-poor imitation of Project Runway, don’t start trying to be “witty” by claiming that the person that’s calling you out wants to suck your genitals, or that they want you to suck their genitals.  That’s only making their point.
3. If, having finally realized the error of your ways, or having had one of the three brain cells in your skull randomly bump one of the other ones, please, please do not sit there comparing every single girl that walks by, claiming that half of them “lost it” and calling them “whores” and “sluts” at the top of your lungs.

On a similar note, ladies, if guys are yelling this at you, do us all a huge favor and stop paying attention to them. Please understand that, by waving back and trying to smile at them, you’re only validating their belief that treating you like complete and utter garbage is the way into your well-trodden crotch tunnel.  Then again, if you really believe that such a guy is worthy of such attention… well, maybe you’re right, in which case, thank you for weeding yourself out of any selection pool I would want any part of.

One final note… if you’re going to a football game, please observe and understand the following basic rules, so that I may reduce my temptation to kick you square in the nuts:

1. We’re all rooting for the same team.  Please do not ridicule your fellow fans, even if you think they dress funny.  Chances are, they’re already well aware they’re dressing funny, and, most likely, that’s probably the point.
2. When one of the most critically acclaimed marching bands in the country comes on to the field, please do not shout, “Play Iron Man!”  First off, Iron Man sucks.  It’s a terrible mind virus that preys upon the weak and devours their souls.  Secondly, they know what they should be playing far better than your drunk, besotted ass does.  That’s why they’re one of the most critically acclaimed marching bands in the country.
3. When your team is ahead by 21-0 at the end of the half, do not ridicule your team for “not blowing out the opponent” or “not being prepared”.  Seriously - you’re winning. Show some class.
4. Do not ask the people around you to buy you a beer, especially if they don’t know you.  First off, beer is expensive.  Secondly, you can only buy one at a time - that’s stadium policy.  If they’re buying you a beer, they won’t be able to buy themselves one.  Finally, if you’re having to have other people buy you a beer, that probably means you’re either not old enough or not rich enough to get drunk - either way, the stadium is not a proper venue to exercise your half-assed theories on collectivist economics.

It feels good to get this off my chest.  It really does.  With that… I am done.

This, right here, might be the most hilariously disturbing and wrong commercial for a car that I have ever witnessed in my short life.

I… I don’t know what to say.  Wow.  Just… wow.  I haven’t felt that way about something I just watched since I saw Cartman pull out a bullhorn and ask Mr. Garrison to orally pleasure his genitalia in the movie theater so many years ago.  My jaw is still on the floor, and, yes, I’m still dizzy from laughing so hard.  Just remember - it’s funny because he failed.

This is what I get for looking at random videos on YouTube.

Last night, Obama gave his convention speech, where he outlined his vision for his candidacy and what he hoped to accomplish.  Slate has the entire text here, including some background information on key points; it’s definitely worth a read.  Since Obama has historically been an excellent prepared-speech presenter, this was supposed to be a moment that would earn him an abundance of press, bump his poll numbers up, and help him finally put McCain away once and for all.

So, what are we talking about today?  Let’s see here…

On Slate, we have… McCain’s VP pick!

CNN?  Why, that’s… not Obama on the front!  That’s McCain again!

Okay, what about MSNBC, home of Olbermann and Matthews?  Surely they think Obama’s speech was headline news, right?  Right?

Okay, okay - what about overseas?  Surely BBC thinks Obama’s speech is more important than anything else going on in this race…

All right, I know one place that will almost certainly have Obama as front-page headline news:  NPR!

That’s right - instead of talking about Obama’s great speech, everybody’s talking about McCain’s choice for Vice-President, one Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska.  By not only choosing Palin, but by announcing her as his VP pick when he did, McCain has done an absolutely outstanding job of shifting the focus away from Obama’s presumed moment of glory and towards his campaign, and, no matter who you’re rooting for, that’s a pretty clever feat of politicking right there.

UPDATE:  While we’re at it, let’s also go over how Palin’s pick benefits McCain - she gets Obama talking about experience.  In order for McCain to win, he needs to fight on ground of his choosing, not Obama’s.  This is why McCain has wanted to debate Obama for months - Obama’s a great preparatory speaker, but not as solid in a debate.  Hillary proved that nicely.  By throwing Palin out there, he reveals a “weakness” in his campaign - an inexperienced Vice-Presidential candidate that’s just as inexperienced as Obama is.  There’s just one catch:  There’s no on-the-job training for being President.  Being a Vice-President, on the other hand, is nothing but on-the-job training.  Yeah, she would also become the President of the Senate, but what are the chances that there are going to be deadlocks that she would need to settle in a predominately Democratic Senate?  Nil?  Slightly less than nil?  So, her job, at least as long as McCain is capable of being President, would involve sitting in meetings, soaking up information from McCain and whatever advisors he chooses to pick, and learning every bit of Washington arcana she will need in order to succeed should she ever need to, well, succeed McCain.

In short, she’s the bait, and Obama is already starting to bite, hook, line, and sinker.  Come to think of it, I seem to remember there being another old man in history that had a knack for getting his opponent to fight on ground of his own choosing, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapunditeers!  Feel free to look around and enjoy your stay.

I just finished reading Jim Lindgren’s article on one of Obama’s more interesting campaign points - universal community service for middle and high schoolers.  An excerpt from Obama’s campaign site:

BARACK OBAMA’S PLAN FOR UNIVERSAL VOLUNTARY CITIZEN SERVICE

–Pause–

Okay, let’s stop at the title:  How is it possible for voluntary citizen service to be universal?  Don’t universal things tend to require that everyone participate?  Very curious - let’s see how Obama overcomes this semantic trouble.

Obama believes the American people are ready to serve their communities, but not enough have been asked or know how. His presidential campaign has been at the leading edge of citizen engagement. Campaign supporters have performed more than 6,400 community service events such as tutoring, building playgrounds, and volunteering at shelters, using the organizing tools at My.BarackObama.com. As president, Obama will work to inspire Americans from all walks of life to serve and will help build the architecture for them to do it. Obama’s plan will:
•   Encourage national service to address the great challenges of our time, including combating climate change, extending health care, improving our schools and strengthening America overseas by showing the world the best of our nation.
•   Expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots and double the size of the Peace Corps.
•   Integrate service-learning into our schools and universities to enable students to graduate college with as many as 17 weeks of service experience under their belts. (Emphasis mine - DC)
•   Provide new service opportunities for working Americans and retirees.
•   Expand service initiatives that engage disadvantaged young people and advance their education.
•   Expand the capacity of nonprofits to innovate and expand successful programs across the country.
•   Enable more Americans to serve in the armed forces.

Before we dig into the bolded part, I’d like to point out that, as far as that last item goes, I don’t think the problem is that Americans are insufficiently abled to serve in the armed forces.  On the contrary, last I checked, each branch of the military is actively looking for new recruits.  So, it’s not like they’re really pushing people away at the moment.  Perhaps Obama will increase their recruitment budgets?  That would be nice.

Now, about that “service-learning”… would you like to know more?

II.     INTEGRATE SERVICE INTO EDUCATION
Barack Obama calls his years working as a community organizer in Chicago’s South Side the best education he ever had. He believes that all students should serve their communities. Studies show that students who participate in service-learning programs do better in school, are more likely to graduate high school and go to college, and are more likely to become active, engaged citizens. Schools that require service as part of the educational experience create improved learning environments and serve as resources for their communities.  Obama’s plan sets a goal for all students to engage in service, with middle and high school students performing 50 hours of service each year, and college students performing 100 hours of service each year. Under this plan, students would graduate college with as many as 17 weeks of public service experience under their belts.

This would be the universal part of “voluntary” service.  See, nothing says “voluntary” like forcing people to do it in order to get an education. Education in the United States, you see, is compulsory.  By tying “voluntary” community service to compulsory education, you are not making the community service “voluntary” anymore.  That said, let’s pretend for a second that it didn’t matter - let’s pretend that it didn’t matter one whit that Obama is talking about forcing parents and students to do one more government-mandated activity on top of their regular lives.  Let’s pretend that Obama isn’t talking about requiring adults who happen to go to college to engage in unpaid federal labor for a bit.  What would this community service program give us?

1. If you’re poor, would you be better off getting a paid job, or getting an unpaid job?
2. If you’re poor, would you be better off if your children got paid jobs, or were doing federally mandated unpaid community service?
3. If you don’t like going to school, will you like it more if you have to attend more government-mandated functions in order to finish it?
4. Is it legally possible, in a Constitutional sense, for the federal government to require adult citizens to engage in any civil service that doesn’t involve the draft?
5. College students are a very supportive demographic for Obama.  How would college students feel about having 100 hours a year taken from them that could be better served by working, in order to keep their student debt load at a minimum, or by studying, in order to maximize their college education?

Look, I don’t like McCain by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he’s not talking about drafting everyone over the age of 11, which is pretty much what Obama is talking about here.  Sure, Obama’s not sending everyone off to die, which is fine and great, but he’s still saying that, on top of the taxes that everyone has to pay, every parent will have to make sure that their children get to their government-mandated community service activities and that every person between the ages of 11 and 18 give the government 50 hours of free labor a year.  Oh, and if you happen to be interested in furthering your education, you’re going to need to chip in another 100 hours of free labor each year.

To summarize:

• College students - Obama is bad for you guys.  Really bad.  You don’t need more time taken out of your already busy lives by a politician that thinks he knows better than everyone.
• Parents - Obama is bad for you, too.  See above, only your time is going to be nuked by having to provide transportation for each of your kids’ mandatory 50 hour community service blocks.  Good luck with that.
• Working people - Obama is bad for you, as well.  Guess who’s paying for these government-funded community service projects?  That’s right - everyone that pays taxes.  That would be you…
• Rich people - And you.  Then again, you weren’t voting for him, anyway.

This message was paid for by the Committee to Elect Anybody But Obama.

The ESO and I were sitting in Quiznos tonight when I heard something on the radio.  It was Hall & Oates’ Private Eyes, which got me thinking - what other songs almost scream “psychotic control freak stalker”?

So far, I’ve made it to two. I’m disappointed.  Here’s what I have so far:

1. Private Eyes, Hall & Oates
2. Every Breath You Take, The Police

Of course, the fact that they both came out during the ’80s is definitely worth noting.  If we felt like stretching a little, we could throw in The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) in the mix, which does have a “I’m going to follow you until the ends of the Earth” vibe.  That said, it doesn’t have anywhere near the level of creepiness that the other two songs had, and that’s what I’m looking for - I want at least a solid 60 minutes of pure, unadulterated pop music creepiness.

Help me out.  Point me in the direction of more stalker music.  You’ll thank me later.

That’s right - another one thrown into the hopper.  Enjoy!

Contrary to what Linux Hater might think, Linux is democracy.

That’s the problem.

Let’s get some background going before I dig into this:

Even though their numbers are small, they’re all on the internets! And like 23 hrs a day! They could all unite behind a common cause, organize, work together, and …. oh wait. Ha ha. I get it now. They can’t even do that to produce a working operating system. What makes anyone think they can do it in real life?

Yes that’s right folks. Lets not kid ourselves. Linux is not a democracy. Linux is anarchy. Everyone going in their own damn directions. It’s not about working together. It’s about works for me! It’s not Yes We Can, it’s Yes I Can.

For better or worse, Linux is a working operating system in much the same way that the American government is a working, functioning governing body - for the most part, just barely. Like most government that American citizens endure, Linux consists of a loose hodgepodge of various components designed to, at least on paper, do one thing and one thing well.  Of course, just like in real, democratic government, few of those components really do anything well, and even fewer are actually designed to talk to each other.  The end result is an operating system that is as easy to use as a standard-issue democratic government bureaucracy.

But, look on the bright side - it’s free!

American civil government is, at its very core, designed to fail.  The Founding Fathers wanted the American government to do as little as possible while making sure that it could still defend the borders and keep the states from killing each other.  Consequently, the Founding Fathers gave the government some very specific powers, telling it to do a few things and do them well, which it largely does - run the military (best in the world, no matter how you look at it), keep interstate commerce functioning (reasonably successful, even if it uses the Commerce Clause to do things it shouldn’t - then again, tell me there isn’t a Luser out there who doesn’t abuse sed), and… well, that’s about it.  American government is not designed to do anything past those basic roles - consequently, what roles it’s adopted since then have been crudely bolted on to the simple and plain framework set forth over 200 years ago.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Networking, graphics, and sound were all bolted on to Unix in a similar fashion - since Linux was initially little more than another implementation of a Unix-like system, guess what it inherited?  To add insult to injury, Linux then adopted the most democratic form of software management possible.  The end result is something that should be familiar with anyone who’s bothered to deal with American government for more than about five seconds - pure, unadulterated, unmitigated mediocrity, born and raised by a series of conflicting special interest groups, each trying to make more noise than the next.

The great thing about democracy as far as politics go is that, yes, it’s mediocre, and, yes, it’s prone to failure.  However, as I’ve discussed in the past, that’s not only part of the design, that’s what makes democracy great.  The rub here, though, is that there’s a world of difference between picking an operating system and migrating to a place with a different governing style.  Migrating to another place involves making new friends, getting citizenship documentation taken care of, getting a new job or two, finding a new place to live - the process can take years.  Migrating to a new operating system, on the other hand, at least as far as a single machine goes, can take as little as a day.  Plus, the consequences of choosing a poor operating system are frequently much less dire than the consequences of being born in, say, North Korea or some other totalitarian hellhole, which changes the value proposition of “totalitarian ‘non-free’ software” vs. “democratic ‘free’ software” dramatically.

The beauty of totalitarian, dictatorial systems is that, when they’re led by small cadres with clear roles, assuming the person in charge is competent and visionary, they can achieve amazing successes, at least for a fairly short amount of time.  The reason is simple - vision. A charismatic leader can marshall resources and manpower most effectively through a totalitarian system that allows the leader to call the shots.  The smaller the system in which the leader is working in, the more successful the leader becomes - this is why Apple is considered “trendy” and “visionary” while Microsoft is considered more of a “follower” in the industry.  As Microsoft exemplifies, though, even a totalitarian system will need to delegate authority as the system grows.  Also, totalitarian systems lose power when they have to acquire necessary assets from other systems - this is why autarky (the so-called “Juche Idea“) is so popular with totalitarian systems, and also why Apple has as much power as it does compared to Microsoft, even though Apple is vastly smaller.  Consequently, a well-run totalitarian system will always out-perform even the best running democratic system - even the Founding Fathers knew this, which is why it’s legally and Constitutionally possible to suspend habeus corpus during wartime.

In the real world, when a well-run totalitarian system stops being well-run, the end result is the collapse of that totalitarian system, frequently with dire consequences for everyone living within it.  This, more often than not, leads to significant loss of money, manpower, and intellectual capital.  In the case of computer technology, however, something entirely different happens - other competing systems will step in and take customers (i.e. money and manpower) away from the poorly run totalitarian system.  Thus, each system learns from all of the previous ones, learning new technologies while also learning from the mistakes of old, all without loss of life or, usually, data.  Consequently, democracy’s greatest strength - the ability to be consistently mediocre - is eliminated since there’s no need for consistent mediocrity; consistent greatness can be achieved by simply hopping from one visionary system to the next.  Worst yet, since democratic systems tend to dilute vision as much as humanly possible (vision has the nasty habit of being unpopular at first, after all), it’s impossible for democratic systems to produce visionary, industry-leading software, except in areas that totalitarian systems have found to be uneconomically viable.

In short, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Democracy simply doesn’t work.

First, a moment of self-disclosure:  I am not a morning person.  Not even remotely.  Getting me awake under the best of circumstances involves an Act of Congress, a 21-gun salute, and enough coffee to fund a small South American insurrection.  This made college interesting; my freshman year was a near-disaster due to me discovering that “not a morning person” and “Calculus at 8 in the morning” simply do not mix. After that year, I quickly adjusted my schedule to make sure no class started before 10 a.m.  Since then, however, I’ve recognized that, though I may naturally wake up around 9 or so in the morning, the rest of the world doesn’t, and, until I get high enough in my field to work at a place with flextime or that at least allows telecommuting, I better learn to find some way to adjust against this particular weakness.

This journey has led to something of a small war between myself and my subconscious.  At first, I started with something simple - I turned up the volume of my alarm.  My subconscious adapted by learning how to turn off my alarm in my sleep.  I then asked my former roommate, who woke up a little before I did, to wake me up in the morning.  My subconscious adapted first by talking in my sleep, then following it up with grabbing limbs in my sleep, which ultimately led to me starting to hit people in my sleep - this sufficiently discouraged that roommate enough to nix that idea.  Talking to others like me, I picked up another trick - I moved the alarm clock to the other side of the bedroom from my bed.  That was the most successful measure, for, by the time I got out of bed and walked to the alarm clock to turn it off, my mind was usually awake enough for me to stay awake once I killed the alarm.

The key word in that last sentence, of course, was usually, which brings me to where I am today.  At this point, I literally sleepwalk to the alarm, turn it off, then sleepwalk back to bed and go to sleep.  This, needless to say, has done absolutely wonderful things to my work schedule.  Consequently, I need to come up with another countermeasure.  The catch, though, is that the ESO, though also difficult to wake up in the mornings, hasn’t quite reached the level of sheer and utter malevolence between herself and her sleepy subconscious; if I get too creative, I risk turning her into collateral damage.  That would not bode well for my ability to continue sleeping next to her.

Here are my thoughts:

• I could get another baby monitor, place it next to the alarm clock, which would be relocated to the opposite end of the apartment, and put the other side of it in the bedroom.  This would make it necessary for me to walk all the way to the other end of the apartment in order to turn it off.  Of course, this could be countered by my subconscious simply turning off the baby monitor.  Until that point, of course, the ESO would probably be rather miffed that it took the better part of five minutes for me to wander over to the alarm clock.
• I could do what I did during finals week in college - plug in a set of computer speakers into the alarm clock and turn the volume to maximum.  Thus, when the alarm went off, I’d wake up due to about 90 dB of morning talk radio blasting through my ears.  Of course, when I did this in college, my entire dorm floor was ready to kill me, and, in fact, had begun to organize a small posse to find out whose alarm clock was going off - it didn’t help I had a final at 7 in the morning and that it took me about 15 minutes to realize that was my alarm clock going off like a jet engine, so I should probably turn it off.  Yeah… I wasn’t very popular in college.
• Put the alarm clock in the kid’s room.  This would wake the kid up, waking me up, and waking everyone else in the house up.  Of course, this would result in the instant loss of genitalia as soon as the ESO discovered what I did.

So, I’m submitting to all of you - how do you wake up in the morning?  What tricks do you have up your sleeve to make sure that, when that alarm goes off, you get out and start your day?

Thank you, Fark.  Thank you.

Then: America must embrace wind power to save the planet. Now: Big Wind is despoiling nature, ruining America’s farms, splitting up families. Soon to come: America must embrace moonbeams and unicorn farts to save the planet

Naturally, the first comment under this thread goes a little something like this:

voltOhm

2008-08-17 01:39:05 PM

Heh.  I’m not sure what more there is to say.  I could insert a rant about how generating electricity and energy is going to require more than simply waiting for the stuff to fall from the sky - I mean, you have to have something to, I don’t know, collect it with, right?  But, that would be incredibly redundant and pointless, so there you go.

• I don’t care what this commercial says, Soyjoy does not cause spontaneity, nor is it fortified with optimism.  It’s a bar of soy. A bar of Vicoden, on the other hand, could very well cause spontaneity.  Outside of that, though, do they really expect people to believe that, if they happen to eat something one step away from fruit-filled tofu, they’ll suddenly want to jump rope and spread herpes and mono to strangers?  Ugh.
• I showed the ESO Firefly last night - plowed through the first three episodes.  Her view, at least thus far, is that it would be a perfectly tolerable show if it wasn’t for the constant twang in the background.  She likes the dialog and thinks the “space cannibals” (Reavers) are an interesting twist; unfortunately, she’s having some serious troubles getting past the “western” part.  Can’t entirely say I blame her - it took me a bit to warm up to that myself.  Then again, I had Kaylee around to encourage me; for whatever reason, neither Mal nor Jayne are doing it for her.  Weird.
• I like bullet points.  They’re fun!
• The Dakota has been successfully repaired.  This makes me incredibly happy, in no small part since it means I can actually drive it again.  Ah, good times.
• It is said that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Russia invaded Georgia - that’s an action.  Georgia, by the looks of things, seems to be largely destined towards becoming a slightly rebellious vassal state of Russia; this was probably expected within minutes of Russia declaring they were invading Georgia.  On the other hand, Russia has successfully freaked out the rest of its neighbors enough that the Ukraine is offering the services of its early warning system, Poland is volunteering to host our missile defense system, and Estonia is providing IT support against Russian hackers.  Of course, each of these actions have equal and opposite reactions, as well - for example, the reaction from Russia regarding Poland’s enthusiasm towards our missile defense shield was to threaten Poland with nuclear assault.

I’ve got another Car Lust up, folks.  Behold - my words are being read by thousands!

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Above is a picture that says, more than anything else tonight, how my efforts to fix my truck are going.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my truck in to get the alignment checked and taken care of.  I purchased the “Lifetime Alignment” for it a couple of years ago, which I like to take advantage of fairly frequently.  This last time, however, my mechanic told me something rather troubling - due to some serious issues with some of the hardware, they weren’t able to align it this time around.  They wanted to replace the upper and lower ball joints, a tie rod end, the Pitman arm, and the idler arm.  They also wanted to charge $800 for this laundry list.

I thanked them for bringing this list of problems to my attention, then mentally flipped them the bird.  I also hit up RockAuto and got the parts I needed to do the job myself.  Total tally:  $170.  So far, so good.  About a week later, since I cheaped out on shipping, I received the parts that I needed and a couple of extras - why replace one tie rod end, after all, when you can replace both of them?  And, why not replace the tie rod adjustment sleeve while I’m at it?  They’re right there!

And thus, it began…

In fairly short order, I realized I was going to need some tools.  For starters, I needed a ball joint press.  Since I figured I would be doing this sort of thing roughly once, maybe twice in my lifetime, I figured I’d go cheap - the tools didn’t have to last forever, after all.  They just needed to last long enough for me to replace a few ball joints in my truck.  No big deal, right?  So, I went to the Harbor Freight here in Reno and went shopping.

On the off chance that some of my readers might have no idea what a Harbor Freight is, it’s probably best to describe it via simile:  Harbor Freight is to tools what Walmart is to clothes.  Harbor Freight sells very inexpensive tools, which, at least on paper, sounds like the perfect place to go when you’re just a sporadic home mechanic.  You don’t go to Harbor Freight for tools that your livelihood depends on, of course, but, at least for me, tools are a cost center, not a profit center, so anything that minimizes that cost sounds like a perfectly brilliant idea.  So, I got myself a ball joint press, a pickle fork, and the pictured Pitman arm puller.

I still have the pickle fork.  It’s a little bent and dented, but it still works.  That’s one for three.

During use of the ball joint press, the C-clamp bent.  Keep in mind that, in a ball joint press, the C-clamp is basically a gigantic, twenty pound C-shaped piece of solid metal. The trouble, of course, is the “metal” part - see, most tools are made out of steel.  Not Harbor Freight tools, though - no, they use a little thing called “ductile iron“.  Now, why somebody would make something that needs to hold its shape under extreme pressure out of a substance whose sole redeeming quality is that it bends easily, well, I can only guess, and my guess would involve lots and lots of Yuan and Renminbi.  Or, to put it another way, it’s all about the BenjaMaos.

So, I returned the ball joint press and used AutoZone’s loan-a-tool program to get a better one for a day or two.  It turned out to be cheaper than getting my own, anyways.  Thus, after two days, my coworker and mechanically minded friend (who shall be referred to as “D-Prime” from here on out) and I successfully changed the ball joints in the truck.

So far so good, right?  Well…

The tie rods were easy enough to contend with using the tools we had - the pickle fork dealt with them appropriately.  There was still the idler arm and the Pitman arm to contend with, however, and all the pickle fork pounding in the world wasn’t going to remove those things.  Anticipating this, I picked up the pictured Pitman Arm puller at Harbor Freight while I was over there returning the ball joint press, thus proving that, no, I most certainly do not learn from my mistakes if it can at all be helped.

Today, I used the Pitman Arm puller.  The Pitman Arm, I’m sad to say, is still attached to the truck, firmly stuck to the steering gear, taunting me, laughing at me. It has successfully proved, beyond a shadow of any doubt, the folly of using ductile iron tools against quality Chrysler Engineering.

(Coincidentally - Dodge Dakotas are easy to work on, assuming you don’t get tools that are cheaper than the truck.  Fortunately, you have to get some really cheap tools to pull that off…)

The task for tomorrow?  Buy a Pitman Arm puller from someone that can actually import tools from the post-Cultural Revolution part of China.  Remove the Pitman Arm.  Then, use that tie rod remover pictured next to it to deal with the idler arm.  That one I’m not concerned about - I know the tie rod remover works well enough to dislodge that sucker from the tie rod.  No worries there.

With that, here’s another, equally crumulent picture of the cheaply made Pitman Arm “puller”:

Today, I’m going in a slightly different direction. Instead of writing about something that nerds like, I’m going to touch on something nerds hate. Today’s lesson in hate:

Social Networking Sites

You meet someone. You’re not sure if they’re cool or not - they seem a little quirky, but, at first, that seems kind of interesting. They’re able to talk intelligently about just about every topic you throw at them. You decide you must keep in touch with this person, so you ask them if they have a Facebook account.

They say no.

Hmm, you think to yourself, that’s strange. All of you other friends have Facebook accounts. Maybe this person is just a Myspace holdover and hasn’t bothered to migrate yet. It’s been a while since you’ve signed in, of course, but now you might have an excuse to check in again. So, you ask them what their Myspace user name is.

They don’t have one.

Twitter? Denied. Now this person is starting to look pained and a little annoyed. Well, okay, you think to yourself, let’s ask this person how they keep track of their friends. Surely they have some mechanism available to them to let 1,247 of their closest friends know what’s going on in their lives. Maybe this person just uses Livejournal or something.

“Livejournal?” he snorts. “You’re kidding, right?”

Now you’re getting pissed. He’s starting to sound awfully condescending, and you’re not appreciating it much. Plus, you’re discovering that this new, interesting person you met seems to not care how their friends find about them. However, as a last ditch effort, you decide you’ll ask this new person how they keep track of their friends and vice-versa. What site does this person use?

The new person relaxes for a second. You can tell that they are very relieved you asked that question, though you don’t understand why just yet. Then, they give you their answers, and you’ve never heard of any of them. They start talking about Usenet. They mention that they have a blog on a web server that’s operating out of their closet. At about the point that they begin to explain what patches they made to Apache in order to get their customized installation of Wordpress going, you realize something:

You’ve met a nerd.

Nerds despise social networking sites for a variety of reasons. This much is fairly well documented. Most nerds have issues with how it makes “advanced” technology like web pages accessible, and how that will lead to the end of all civilization.  This has been the mantra of nerds for at least as long as AOL has been a household name, and there’s a very good reason for this:  Whenever somebody gets on to something like Myspace, Facebook, AOL, Geocities, or whatever and it breaks/doesn’t do what they think it should/they can’t get it to do what they want it to do/etc., who do they call to fix it?  That’s right - the nerd. After a while of this, the nerd gets rather tired of dealing with these issues, most of which would have been prevented if, in their mind, the person would’ve just used some basic common sense and did “simple” things like finding the checksum of that program they downloaded and seeing if it matches the number the manufacturer provides, or setting up SSH tunnels to key sites, or checked to see if their HTML syntax conformed to the latest W3C standards.  That the person they’re trying to help has no idea what a checksum is or what an SSH tunnel is just reinforces their belief that (insert social networking site here) is a haven of illiterate, drooling morons who are not fit for breeding stock.

When dealing with a nerd, it’s important to remember that, if you require them to be remotely helpful, it’s important to not come off as a drooling moron.  Consequently, avoid mentioning social networking sites around one.  If you must, try to couch it with rationalizes such as, “Well, I wouldn’t be on there, but my family is on there and it’s the only way I can keep track of them.”  Be sure to declare any feature that allows someone to talk or interact with you as “annoying” and “frustrating”.  This will tell the nerd that you’re in it to make your friends and family happy, and not because you’re a drooling moron - this will cause a feeling of minor sympathy to well up in the nerd, which can be used to extract favors and tech support.

Plus, I’m Finally Remembering To Use Capital Letters With My Subject Titles Again!

For those not in the know, or haven’t been paying attention around here, I’m not a big fan of using Windows on a personal basis.  I have no problems recommending it in corporate environments or for friends; I just don’t like having to stare at it on my own machines after working on it 40+ hours a week.  So, a couple of years ago, I threw in an Ubuntu CD and never looked back.

Never, that is, until Hardy Heron, the latest version.  Suddenly, I was tripped in “Evolution of an Ubuntu User” mode, and I wanted out.  Unfortunately, most of the problems I was experiencing dealt with products that other distributions were starting to include, so, at least as far as Linux was concerned, I was feeling a little stuck.  Some of the problems I had included:

• Copy/Paste didn’t work on the Terminal Server Client.  Guess what?  It’s a known bug.
• If I closed my laptop and opened the lid while the power was on, the screen would remain blank.  Guess what?  It’s also a known bug.
• VMWare won’t install due to an incompatible kernel version.  Great. Thank goodness Linus can change the API between kernel 2.6.19 and 2.6.24.  I’d hate to think that a product with incremental minor version numbers actually has, y’know, a stable API. Hell, let’s change function names on the fly!  It’ll be fun!

This state of affairs continued for the better part of three months.  I was getting frustrated, tired, and just generally sick of it.  I was even flirting with trying a BSD… heck, I still might.  At least their upgrade process is almost sane, in that they actually have a semi-stable kernel API, among other things.  Besides, the more I read the Linux Hater’s Blog, the more I agree with it - there some profoundly stupid things going on with Linux, and most of that is by design.

The good news, though, is that I did find some fixes to two out of my three problems:

1. I fixed Copy/Paste by turning off Compiz.  I didn’t like the eye candy anyways.  Of course, why Ubuntu felt it was necessary to turn on, by default, something that is at version 0.5.2, I don’t know.  But, it stopped mucking about with my X server, which meant that rdesktop had access to my clipboad again.  Huzzah!

   (For those of you keeping track at home, you can turn off Compiz by going to System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects->None.  Then, restart; it’ll turn off the effects but Compiz still kind of runs in the background unless you restart your computer.)

2. Sadly, Compiz was not the cause of my laptop’s malfeasance whenever I closed it.  So, I looked around and discovered that Ubuntu’s hardware manager was giving me old Nvidia drivers (169.something).  Maybe that has something to do with it?  With a little searching, I discovered EnvyNG, which allows me to install Nvidia drivers in a halfway sane manner (i.e. without having to recompile the stupid thing whenever Ubuntu decides my kernel needs to be updated - this happens frequently).  It updated my drivers, I restarted… and now I have my laptop back!  It closes!  It opens!  I’m happy!  Even CTRL-ALT-F1 through F6 work!  Happy days!

Of course, VMWare still doesn’t work, which means I can’t even manage VMWare machines with my laptop unless I start learning about remoting into applications via X.  That said, anything with instructions like these should probably be shunned without prejudice…

Our computer is known to the outside as light, and we’re in domain uni.verse. If we’re running a normal X server, the display is known as light.uni.verse:0. We want to run the drawing program xfig on a remote computer, called dark.matt.er, and display its output here on light.

Suppose you have already telnetted into the remote computer, dark.matt.er.

If you have csh running on the remote computer:

dark% setenv DISPLAY light.uni.verse:0
dark% xfig &

or alternatively:

dark% xfig -display light.uni.verse:0 &

If you have sh running on the remote computer:

dark$ DISPLAY=light.uni.verse:0
dark$ export DISPLAY
dark$ xfig &

or, alternatively:

dark$ DISPLAY=light.uni.verse:0 xfig &

or, of course, also:

dark$ xfig -display light.uni.verse:0 &

It seems that some versions of telnet automatically transport the DISPLAY variable to the remote host. If you have one of those, you’re lucky, and you don’t have to set it by hand. If not, most versions of telnet do transport the TERM environment variable; with some judicious hacking it is possible to piggyback the DISPLAY variable on to the TERM variable.

You have got to be kidding me.  Ugh.  Of course, that writeup was written in 2001, so things have certainly improved since then (NOTE:  Don’t think about what Citrix was doing with Windows 2000, nor that Microsoft had a working Terminal Server implementation by then!).  I’ll have to look at that later.

Oh, and, no, VNC is not a solution.  Stop that.

One of the fascinating aspects of living with an infant that people rarely nail down is what an infant does to the time you have during a day.  Most people will tell you that infants require tons of time and tons of attention - believe it or not, this really isn’t true.  Always remember that, when dealing with infants, they behave very similarly to dogs; they’ll sleep through most of the day, being awake at various random parts to eat, poop, and occasionally snuggle.  That’s all an infant does.  In many ways, you can treat an infant similarly to a dog - if you feed it, talk to it, occasionally take it outside, and bathe it from time to time, you’re meeting its needs for the next few months.

There’s one hitch, though.

A seldom-discussed fact of infant life is that, strange as it might sound, they actually sleep more than adults.  A lot more.  Infants will actually sleep up to 14 hours each day.  What they won’t do, at least not for a few months, is actually do enough of that in a single block to be remotely useful for an adult sleep cycle.  This wrecks complete and total havoc on the sanity of the parents.

What this means, at least in my experience, is that you still have nearly as much time as you ever had to get things done, but a lot less energy to do them with.  Everything just kind of feels like you’re pushing through molasses, making everything take longer than it used to in order to get things done.  It’s not that the kid has really affected your time schedule much - he’s barely awake half the day, after all, and it’s not like children aren’t portable - he’s just completely nuked your ability to actually use your time with any efficiency.

This, coincidentally, is my cop-out on why my blog has suffered a minor meltdown.  The good news is that work has been increasingly quiet as of late, which tends to help my energy levels a little.  The bad news is that my ability to maintain a coherent thought worth writing about is directly proportional to the amount of sleep I’m able to get during the night, and, at this point, we’re in “How the hell am I not babbling random Broadway showtunes?” territory.  I’m not kidding.  During a work meeting tonight, I caught myself humming the Canadian National Anthem. No idea why.  Not sure what the point of it was, or what its relevance was.  My brain just decided it was time to hum it, so I did.  Thankfully, I did it quietly, so I doubt it was noticed, but, even so, it’s a little disconcerting.

Things on the list for the near future:

• I haven’t given up on the “Stuff Nerds Like” feature around here.  I have a few posts started, believe it or not.  The trouble is actually coming up with something interesting to say about them - I mean, you can only write, “Nerds really like X.  It helps them escape the cold, harsh nature of reality,” so many times before you feel you’re not only repeating yourself but not really providing anything useful to the conversation.  Yeah, I get it - Science Fiction, LARPing, etc. is all an attempt to escape reality.  So is Burning Man.  Surely, in the wild, twisted maze that is my brain at this point, is some insight that digs just a wee bit deeper than that.  I mean, if you need me to state the obvious, well, I can do that, but c’mon…
• At some point this week, I will find a way to check out some Hot August Nights action.  Then, I shall blog about it… but not here.  I shall blog about it there.

When Aiden was born, my traffic numbers, according to Sitemeter, went into the toilet.  I couldn’t understand why, or what had happened.  Then, I noticed I was getting no referrals, except for a couple from Google - what was going on, I wondered?  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and decided it was high time to find out what happened.

The answer?  I’m an idiot.  That’s what happened.  Apparently, sometime close to when Aiden was born, I wiped out the Sitemeter code.  Brilliant. What I was getting was my hit counter on the old Blogspot blog.

Oy.  Sleep deprivation is a bitch, people.  I’m not kidding.

Today’s special:  The Suzuki Samurai.

I’m hoping that my schedule becomes more sane next week, which will help alleviate the dearth of decent posts around here.  It took effort to throw together a Car Lust post for the week, and it’s not like they need to be terribly long or frequent.