Month: April 2008

  • DoNotReply.com

    This page is fascinating reading.

    Donotreply.com posts snippets of emails that end up in their server because of IT support or other messages that are sent from *****@donotreply.com.

  • Beware the International Call

    A co-worker of mine had a (presumably) wrong number on his cell phone this morning at 1:30 AM EDT. The number was 92213xxxxxx. He showed it to me because I’m one of the in-house geeks and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

    I suggested that it might be an international call, but I was entirely unfamiliar with how to make one, so I wasn’t sure. We googled it, though and discovered that “92” is the country code for Pakistan and “213” is in Karachi.

    Now I sit and wonder how long before the black helicopters come swooping down to drag him to Gitmo. We’ll see.

  • Comcast Chapping our Ass

    We’ve been having regular morning internet outages for the past few weeks. Not every day, but often enought to make it seem regular. Our internet provider is Comcast and we’re pretty much stuck with them, alas.

    This is genuinely odd. Given the regular nature, I’m not at all tempted to blame the modem, especially because it comes back without any reset. I may look into some sort of internet monitoring program that I can run in the background of one of the PC’s, just to have some data.

  • Why Parrots are Annoying

    I do not self-identify as liberal. Nor do I self-identify as conservative. And I agree, Liberals are annoying (so are conservatives). But not half as annoying as this young woman. Let me know how far you get through the video.

  • New Walking Robot

    Cornell has pushed the envelope when it comes to designing machines to efficiently move themselves around. A walking robot, intended to show walking energy-efficiency rather than self-reliance, has walked 5.6 miles on one battery charge, which from the size of the robot seems impressive.

    Check out the link for the news release.

  • Tax Day, 2008

    Today is TurboTax’s day of reckoning. Will they burst their servers’ seams like last year or will they weather the storm? We shall see.

    That is my introduction the day’s topic of discussion: Taxes. As an American who proudly states that I live in one of the best countries in the world1, I really don’t have a problem with my tax load. According to my handy dandy calculations, our married-filing-jointly tax rate is surprisingly low. That is because we are doing some of the things that the tax code encourages us to do: be homeowners, donate to charity, etc. As soon as we have kids, or start contributing to IRA’s, or losing money on our farm, we’ll do even better!

    Unfortunately, it’s an election season, and moreover it’s looking like there will be a changing of the guard from Spend More than our Income Republicans to Spend More than our Income, but Raise Taxes a Bit to Make The Deficit Less Democrats. It doesn’t seem that fiscal responsibility is a big ticket item this election cycle despite it is arguably the most important long-term agenda item. Part of that is the difficulty in presenting an effective plan to the public that won’t immediately result in a pitchforks and torches party. I’m a realist enough to admit that people don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to adopt healthy fiscal policies. That doesn’t change the fact that we’re rapidly chasing the rabbit down the hole and soon we’ll be in crazy land where someone can say “it’s only a 200 billion dollar deficit” and everyone nods like that’s a good thing.

    The process might be painful, but I see some low hanging fruit.2

    • 1) Get the hell out of Iraq. Whether you agree or disagree about the policies that got us there/keep us there, you have to agree that the war is costing a ton of money. That is money that shouldn’t be spent at all. The argument that it’s money that should be spent at home is a false dichotomy. This is money we’re borrowing and paying interest on.
    • 1a) Re-think the size of our armed forces. Armies and Navies are expensive. Do we really need to have one the size we do now? Military expenditures are the second highest item after social services. This is ultimately a policy decision, whether we want to maintain a force that can kick-ass any three places in the world. Personally, I think we have the premier fighting forces in the world, however the American philosophy of armed conflict is OVERWHELMING FIREPOWER until we win, then leave. We need to remember that last part: leave. I won’t stake too hard a position on this item, but it remains a huge portion of our national budget.
    • 2) Implement the FairTax provisions. BAM! You just freed up overhead expenditures that are being used by the IRS to monitor, interpret and enforce the tax code. Those expenditures, not no longer going into a sinkhole can be applied elsewhere in the federal budget.
    • 3) Do an across-the-board 10% budget cut. Or, show no budget increases for the next three years. That will equate to a 10% cut when inflation is accounted for.
    • 4) Remove the ability for Congress to include earmark riders in federal legislation. Okay, this one isn’t a low-hanging fruit, but it’s necessary to display some fiscal restraint.
    • 4a) Give the President the line-item veto ability when it comes to budget authorizations. That way, congress critters can tell their constituents that it wasn’t their fault that the pork subsidies weren’t increased. It was el Presidente!

    The problem, of course, resides with the politicians. Despite campaign rhetoric, republicans have never been any more interested in small government than democrats. Even President Reagan only chose to exercise fiscal cutbacks in the arena of health and welfare. Ask the USSR about how much Reagan cut the military. The truth is that the demand for restraint is only going to work if the people get behind and push and I’m too much of a cynic to see that happening.

    I invite anyone who’s answer to these proposals is “it’s just not that simple” to explain to me why it can’t be that simple.

    Update: After I finished writing this, I saw a news item about McCain’s Tax Day speech. He’s proposing that congress “help spread relief across the American economy” by declaring a Federal gas & diesel tax holiday between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The Federal fuel taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon of gas and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel. By my calculations, that will save me and Jenn about $59 this summer. I think I’ll let the Feds keep it, especially because that $59 directly funds my job. I can see where a gas tax relief would help people who are more dependent on vehicles, such as truckers, but this is just pissing in the wind. Three months of no fuel taxes will mean three months of no receipts into the Federal Transportation Infrastructure Fund, which will spell worse funding issues later, meaning the need to raise taxes. How does this help?

    1 that title is debatable, and I don’t necessarily disagree with those people who state that we are not the best country presently
    2 while reading this, please keep in mind that my salary is directly affected by government spending. I’m a traffic engineer working for states and counties, so it’s not like I’m divorced from this topic

  • Homeopathic Asscrackers, Batman!

    I’ve been directed to a new website, which I find quite amusing: Crap-Based Medicine.

    One of the postings is of particular amusment because it points you toward an online homepathic self diagnostic tool. Some of the symptoms that you are able to pick in order to diagnose your ailment, and its homeopathic remedy, border on the ridiculous.

    Here’s a sample of some possible Cough symptoms that can be selected:

    • as from vapour of carbon
    • after suppressed gonorrhoea
    • spreading to or from other parts, with the sound of croup

    That’s a tiny sample.

    Really, I encourage you to go put in your symptoms and find what ails you and how to fix it. Phosphourus, by the way, will fix my allergies.

  • Blog Withdrawal -or- LOLCATS are eating my Soul

    I’ve spent the last 6 weeks to two months ignoring the blogosphere, even my own tiny segment of it. This has consequences. For one thing, those persons who are used to having me drop my tidbits of wisdom on their comment streams are being denied my presence. For another, I’m entirely out of date on what’s been going on in the science/technology arena since January.

    This withdrawal has benefits, however. I’m not subjected to the soul-eating items that are LOLCATS on a daily basis. There are exceptions to my LOLCATS avoidance, though.

    I saw this doing a sweep of some of the blogs I read. Apparently, I’ve been missing the latest edition of “The Large Hadron Collider will devour the planet.” Check it out.

    Hopefully, I’ll be able to stay a bit more on top of things.

  • The Idiot Plot and Other Things

    This man says many things I agree with concerning my reading of novels. No idot plots. Less Deux ex Machina. As I get older, I find myself less and less inclined to read stuff that I used to like. I guess this is me maturing as a critical reader; I demand more out of my escapism.