| nobody loves the gas company |
[17 Feb 2009|09:45pm] |
I got my gas bill today. I was expecting it to be really high because of the number of days < 0F. (Jan's avg. temp was 25F, Feb's was 19F.)
The daily usage of gas did go up about 10% but the number of days went from 33 to 28 so the bill actually decreased. It was more though than than what the decrease in gas usage would indicate--not a bad thing....
I wanted to pay the bill with my credit card online... They let you do that, so I went to their web site and clicked away to the pay bill with credit card page. They had a $6 "convenience" fee for using a credit card - more than a 5% surcharge for the large bill that I had this month. Normally $6 would be totally outrageous. To pay online with your checking account had a mere $1.75 "convenience" fee.
I don't see how using a checking account online costs them any labor or extra expense that they need such a fee at all. Credit card companies charge the vendor some for receiving a payment with the credit card, but $6 is crazy unless your bill is about $1000 and not 100 mumble, and even then, I don't have to pay extra to use my credit card at any local grocery store, phone company or gas station to buy a $1 candy bar.
Sigh.
Bill
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| Religious and political persecution, human rights violations and repression of women in Iran |
[21 Nov 2008|08:45pm] |
I have been continuing to hear of Iran's persecution of minorities, use of torture and suppression of human rights. Recently I heard in the news of a meeting between the Roman Catholic church and the Iranians on the subject.
I've learned the most about their treatment of Baha'is where they have not merely turned against their subjects, but have made specific efforts toward repressing that large religious minority in their country. Baha'is are not the only victims of this persecution, but the extent of the abuse is more pronounced than with other minorities. The Baha'i Faith origins are in Iran (then Persia) in 1844.
Of recent, specifically targeted efforts have been made to identify Baha'is for monitoring. There have been fairly frequent inflammatory newspaper articles providing lies and misinformation about the Baha'i Faith. Baha'is have been expelled from universities when they are identified, assuming that they weren't prevented from enrolling because their files are "incomplete". There have been attacks on Baha'i cemeteries with heavy machinery as well as Baha'i homes being vandalized or attacked by arsonists. Baha'i children in school have been pressured to convert to Islam, had to study from authorized history books that distort and falsify their religious heritage. A number of Baha'is have been arrested and detained without access to due process.
A common justification for the persecution of Baha'is is that they are a political anti-Iranian element. Two items belie this claim. One is that if a Baha'i who is threatened with death or other penalty converts to Islam, they are told that they will be set free. The other is a prominent Baha'i teaching that its members should be obedient to their government.
The international community is aware of their abuse of Baha'is, other minorities and oppression of women as the UN is demonstrating: http://news.bahai.org/story/670 also Amnesty International http://news.bahai.org/story/599
This brings back to my mind the treatment of the Baha'is shortly after the Iranian revolution in 1979. Many were killed while officials turned a blind eye to protecting their own citizens. Since then, several Baha'i holy places have been destroyed. My first encounter with the Baha'i Faith was through news reports of this persecution.
One well known and poignant example of Baha'is killed by the Iranian religious leadership is Mona Mahmudnizhad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_mahmudnizhad was executed in 1983 along with 9 other Baha'i women.
Bill
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| hide and seek |
[08 Nov 2008|10:47pm] |
I was looking for a knife tonight
what would I find but a Rubik's cube. I'm pretty sure it's one of the original one and not a knock off. I also found one with card suits on the faces which is more difficult than the normal cube because, to solve it correctly, you have to get the centers of the faces turned correctly.
Snow tonight?
- Bill
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| Meme |
[30 Sep 2008|09:32pm] |
Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
[I had a bunch of books equidistant, so I reached out without looking. The first thing I hit was a Windows XP install CD, so I disqualified it and picked another book without looking. Page 56 only had 5 sentences, so this is the next 4 from page 57.)
"Upgrading on a Linux Host
You may upgrade from version 4 to version 5 using the upgrade version of VMware Workstation 5. To upgrade from version 3 to version 5, you must have the full version of VMware Workstation 5. Upgrades from earlier versions of VMware Workstation are not supported."
Note: Starting wtih Workstation 5, Samba is no longer automatically configured when you run vmware-config.pl"
Thanks Ron, I'm sure now everyone wants to run out and buy a copy of "Workstation 5 - Powerful Virtual Machine Software for the Technical Professional - User's Manual"
BIll
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| laser printer |
[07 Sep 2008|09:00pm] |
I'm not real keen on the new livejournal, but oh well, I'm not ready to bail yet.
Last night (& it's really sick to think this was funny) Zorro was up on my desk between the laptop and laser printer. She heard the printer warming up and as usual was really curious about the whole matter.
But then the printer started making a lot of noise suddenly and starts spitting out paper. She freaked and backed up so quick that she fell off the desk and ran off to somewhere far away.
Lasers are dangerous, kids. Don't treat them lightly.
Bill
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| fountain and thought |
[13 Jul 2008|09:02am] |
So far it is fountain 3, me 1. I can get the fountain to work, but the 3 pieces aren't tightly bound to each other so that the water rolls out of the wrong side of the top tier. I'm fairly sure I'll be able to brace it correctly but haven't yet.
Here's a poem that I found in the mother lode last nite:
Untitled
Rational thought walks slowly around the room
The paths are familiar and safe, bland and purposeful.
The nighttime is filled with thoughts of love,
thoughts of worlds beyond the sky, beyond the sea.
If the days were longer, the night would be short.
Each possibility for a dream would be hidden by
the brightness of the sun, the sounds of the day.
I look out toward the door and I look in at the
memories. Each were planned by the spirits outside
but they are not unreal or silent. Come to the
screen door and awaken and I will sleep in joy.
August 2, 1992
- Bill
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| another Amazon skirmish |
[05 Jul 2008|10:17pm] |
I decided I wanted to have a indoor water fountain to make nice relaxing sounds. I looked around on eBay and found several varying from something that I would get tired of looking at after a month or two to really big and/or expensive models. I found a couple that I liked, but the vendors looked a little scary - one wanted to you pay outside of the ebay system which is against the rules and the other spent way too much time developing his store - music, menus that rearrange themselves ... ... ...
After I decided that the sound was too manipulative, I turned it off and the store seemed more seedy, especially after I looked at their return policy link that basically was an essay about a certain type of ebay fraud. Scary.
Then I went looking for the same thing on amazon (yes, my downfall, I admit) and found it at basically the same price. Then I remembered that I wanted to expand my collection of Bible translations and got sucked into buying a couple of Qur'an translations too. The Qur'an translations aren't that surprising - I already owned one and since I've got Bahá'í Holy Writings that refer to verses in the Qur'an, it would be nice to have more than one point of view (plus one of the new ones had to be at least 1/2 honest because it included the actual Arabic adjacent to the English text.)
I bought 3 different Bibles although one was an inexpensive copy of the King James Version that probably is a duplicate of one that I already have only less expensive, so I won't feel bad adding notes and cross-references to the new one. One was interesting because it says that was translated from Aramaic and probably used different source material than the normal English translations. How different will have to wait for the book to arrive. I probably should have done more research before spending the money.
I've seen long ago of a New Testament based on the "consensus Greek text"--what the oldest sources have in common with each other. However later someone I talked to said that the most common choice wasn't necessarily a good benchmark to determine an accurate rendering of the original.
So, the net story is that I bought the fountain and have 5 books of scripture on the way too.
-- Bill
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| I have seen the enemy |
[15 Jun 2008|05:00pm] |
I have seen the enemy - something new by one of my favorite rock groups at Amazon.com. and I didn't buy it!
Now I just have to be strong and not go back...
Bill
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| !! |
[11 May 2008|11:27am] |
I had a pile floppy disks waiting patiently on the shelf. I decided to let them meet their end today. While looking through them I found lots of memories. I've got both 3.5" and 5.25" disks in surplus.
A lot of disks say "c:\bbs" which came from my Fidonet BBS--I think my handle was Aquamarine, but I don't remember what the BBS was called.
Some of them are dated 1992 & a few say 1987..
There's GCC 2.70 and two disks labeled Linux 1.2.12. (Those 2 got saved from their doom after all.)
I have a box (of expensive) Xilinx XACT software for development of software for FPGAs. I spent lots of money on the software and a development kit and never did anything with it before the timeout. I found the dongles recently, but I don't remember whether I saved those. Now Xilinx has a free version of their software that will do anything I want. The only project I did with the newer one (so far) was to make a 32 bit serial multiplier using the design in The Art of Computer Programming vol. 2 p. 297-99.
There is a folder of even older disks that I refuse to throw away--TRS-80 software--TRSDOS, a FORTRAN compiler, mmsFORTH and I'm pretty sure there's a TRS-80 Pascal compiler in there too.
I get in these modes of cleaning house. I just went looking for my "loose wires cause fires" photos and couldn't find them but oh I found so many memories! I know I have most if not all of the negatives and I'm interesting to see how well they will scan in. There'll be a rash of new photos on my deviantART site with the non-people photos.
Sometimes there are advantages of being reluctant to throw things away!
- Bill
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| KVM switches are not my friend |
[10 May 2008|02:03pm] |
I've had two KVM switches over the years and both of them died.
It's really frustrating when they do because it can appear to be other problems such as a system not being able to boot. (That's the one that got me today. My web site was down for 2 days until I found it to boot first try when it was connected to a different monitor directly) Today apparently the problem was that the system that couldn't boot didn't know it had a monitor attached (and the monitor didn't know that the computer was attached.)
The two I had that broke were made by the same manufacturer and were really fragile about attaching plugs while something is powered up. Since the second one was powered by what it was connected to, I assumed that it was fully hot pluggable, but apparently it was not at all. I already had one dead port from the past and now I have at least 2.
I've grumbled enough for one post.
Bill
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| Zorro the amazing cat |
[04 May 2008|02:40pm] |
I'm still surprised at Zorro's (the cat) reaction to the laser printer.
Today I printed something when she was napping in the other room. She got up and came running. She's still monitoring the printer to make sure it doesn't misbehave.
- Bill
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| fractal wrongness |
[27 Apr 2008|09:35pm] |
A friend of a friend found this. Fractal Wrongness
(Well, ok, they (Evil Mad Scientists) don't know me and I don't know who showed it to them, but I think it's a pretty creative use of the fractal concept.)
- Bill
(on another note, I realized when I took my web page down that my poetry went down with it, so electric company be damned, my web page is back. http://www.sesquibits.com)
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| Northeast Indiana's A list cities |
[21 Apr 2008|08:37pm] |
Northeast Indiana has more than it's fair share of A list cities and towns; towns whose name begins with A. Albion, Angola, Arcola, Ashley, Auburn and Avilla. All within a 50 miles of the northeast cornier of Indiana.
Why and how this happened no one knows (I think). Of course I'm not the only one who's noticed this.
What I noticed this weekend is that all 6 towns have 6 letter names.
I'm sure this is very important to someone, but I'm not rushing over to wikipedia to add my discovery.
- Bill
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| moustache & goatee |
[13 Apr 2008|12:53am] |
I saw a friend tonight who thought my moustache and beard were new -- they've been on for several months.
I know that my face changes a lot as my weight varies. There are other reasons that observant people have mentioned to me.
My snap response to him when he asked what was different was that I said that I was happier. That response made me feel good all the way home.
Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth without thinking are a good barometer of the rest of me. Other times it's all jumbled up when I try to think too hard.
On a totally other front, I helped my neighbors with their taxes this year - I have an internet connection that their software needed. After their working on taxes I thought, well, since I don't have to pay to get out some more informed numbers, I'd try my information. I was pleasantly surprised to find that if I'd taken all of the deductions that I was allowed to I would have received a 30% bigger federal refund. Obviously I'll be going through my records carefully before filing the 1040X since I low-balled a lot of the numbers in the quick run-through tonight because I couldn't quickly find record of receipts that I know I paid.
Have a great weekend and if you're in the U.S. don't wait 'til 5 minutes to 5 on the 15th to mail your tax returns out.
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| reCAPTCHA description in March 2008 news confusing |
[29 Mar 2008|09:03am] |
The latest news post appears to talk about using reCAPTCHA planning to make documents that a computer can't read.
The way they described it, it's easy to misinterpret that this violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it will make it impossible for blind people to read the text with a screen reader by putting the text in a form unreadable by a computer.
All of the CAPTCHAs to protect account creation that I've ever seen have a link "if you can't read this" to allow for people who are blind or have low vision. To me it sounded like they're trying to make books that are protected is some similary way so that computers can't read them.
If you go to reCAPTCHA, you'll see that LiveJournal's news March 2008 news article is an unnecessarily confusing description of reCAPTCHA's purpose.
All they would have needed to do (at least to keep me from being confused) was to also mention that reCAPTCHA's purpose is to provide assistance to OCR projects in addition to providing a normal CAPTCHA.
- Bill
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| TRS-80 artifact |
[02 Mar 2008|07:36pm] |
I recently found a summary sheet that I used to help program my TRS-80 in assembly language. about 25 years ago.
Here's a link to a picture of it on deviantART: Artifact from TRS-80
Someone suggested that I offer it to a museum. I wonder if any LJ folk know of somewhere that would find it interesting.
- Bill
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| poi-fic |
[18 Jan 2008|11:41pm] |
I've taken up a new hobby -- at least I have all I need to get started. I'm not going outside in this brrrrr weather and I don't have access to a place with a high ceiling. Poi looks like a really fun hobby that can I can grow into and keep my flexibility improving.
I bought a set of poi from http://www.homeofpoi.com with the suggestion and online tutorials by http://www.playpoi.com
Here's a video I just found about preventing injuries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3921roKHiF0
I've got a bunch of Nick's videos on a You Tube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=188536C358C91A9D (edit: I'm not sure if this one works.... apparently you have to be logged in to youTube to use it)
To find more search for meenik there. I like Nick's videos because he doesn't try to show off and impress people with how great he is. He's sincerely enjoying sharing what he's learned about poi and isn't afraid to show when things don't go quite right.
I'm looking forward to developing this skill as a way to become physically active (and like it!)--I'll have to get over stage-fright of doing it where my neighbors can watch me screw up.
I've got the impression that hitting oneself on the head with the poi is a normal part of the process so my poi are fairly soft.
I made a set by myself but overestimated the weight that they should have. What I made myself weighed about a pound each while the ones I bought are about 1/4 pound each.
-- Bill
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| Zorro is in the Dog House |
[17 Jan 2008|09:27pm] |
Zorro was attacking my laptop. She was licking the keyboard and being a pest as only a cat can. I got lots of photos including these two:
They were taken 5 seconds apart.
I was certain she'd eaten the 'V' key and was anxious for her health for a couple of weeks.
That's not the bad part. I ordered a replacement keyboard and installed it. Then, when I was putting the laptop back to its place on the desk less than 5 minutes later, I found the 'V' key that had been lying there for all those weeks that I never saw. argggh!
Now I've got 2 fully working toshiba keyboards and a healthy cat.
Sigh!
- Bill
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| Nokia N800 internet tablet review |
[16 Jan 2008|07:37pm] |
Recently I bought a Nokia N800 internet tablet.
I'll try not to make this a gushing nor blistering review.
The features that I don't use are the web cam and audio input (I don't use them for Skype for example). I know that the blue tooth works because I connected it to my blue tooth GPS box, but I don't know more than that.
I do use the e-mail and chat software, but no one sends me any e-mail and I haven't given that address to many people so that's not surprising. It's very nice because the device has an LED that flashes when you've got something waiting for you and the screen is blacked out to save power. The handwriting recognition isn't too bad although I didn't go through the whole alphabet to adapt it to me - I guess I got bored.
I don't use the web browser because I always have one available somewhere else in the room. I also haven't used it enough to figure out the special features of the browser either. If I need to depend on external Wi-Fi more often, the web browser would get a more accurate evaluation.
I mainly use it as portable mp3 player with a touch screen. I like the control I have in creating and saving play lists. I have one playlist "Ether" which has my new age music in it.
I recently brought up the calculator and feel that it was very well written. However I'm not sure whether it's specific to the Linux on the N800 or that it's a generalized Linux program that I don't have for my Linux PC.
Their technical support gets a B- grade - they are surprisingly easy to get a hold of and professional, but when it comes to deciding whether to send it in for warranty repair they aren't much help with going through a sequence of steps to try to diagnose exactly what's going wrong.
My box has a quirk that if you turn it off for several hours, it won't turn back on without hooking it to a charger. The battery isn't drained, it's just that the reset isn't working correctly. The charger works harder for the reset than the on/off key. Knowing about how technical support works, if I would send it in to repair this, I'm pretty confident that they wouldn't try the steps I take to demo the problem because it takes several hours - they'd just mark it "works for me". That isn't entirely an indictment of them, it's just a general problem in getting hardware repaired on warranty.
I like carrying it around in a coat pocket after locking the touch screen as a portable stereo.
The battery life is nice other than the quirky problem that I mentioned. If I leave it on, everything is happy. I just make sure to disconnect the audio cable and the turn off the Wi-Fi when I don't need it.
The biggest complaint I have for it is that it only supports 2GB SD cards. It has room for 2 and I'd rather have 8GB instead of 4. I can easily swap one of them when I need to, but I haven't done that in practice - to access them I just connect the USB cable from my PC.
-- Bill
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| cat silliness |
[26 Oct 2007|07:02am] |
My cat has discovered a new way to chaser her tail.
When I was young we were able to tease the family pets to chase their tail. Zorro doesn't need any coaxing.
Lately, while I'm using the computer I hear her scraping and scratching on the chair behind me. Yesterday I found out what she was up to.
She has been sitting on the back of the chair so that her front have is on one side hanging down, and her half on the other. I have no idea how she can think that that's comfortable.
Anyway, yesterday I saw her in that position and each time she could see her tail drifting into view, she would reach out and scratch the chair trying futily trying to grab the tail.
Bill
p.s. Greetings to Mark and family who are on Bahá'í pilgrimage to Israel.
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