A Budget
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A Budget Last Updated: Wanna buy a pen?
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Update At Ann was home later than she wanted to be - bad. Rhiannon and Jack both had before-school meetings - bad. The roads were forecast to be bad later today - really bad. The Eagle wouldn't start - Very Bad. Ann was here - silver lining on the bad clouds. The kids got to their destinations. And I still feel like crap - probably suffering from what yesterday started as some form of the crud. Lovely.
[Link] I started looking at how difficult it would be to home-roll RSS Syndication for this particular site. At first, it looked easy, but now, it's looking less and less so. From what I've gathered (which ain't much), there's RSS 1.0 and earlier standards, then there's RSS 2.0. From what I've been able to learn, 2.0 is ... well, dictated by a fellow by the name of Dave Winer. Now, I do not know Mr. Winer. I've read his site from time to time, and when I finish it, I find that I'm clenching my fists, teeth, and other things, wanting to clobber the fellow. Why? Dunno. Years ago, this would have been more than enough justification for me to leap into the fray and beat the metaphysical crap out of him (not that he'd notice, as I'm the internet equivalent of the snot from a fly on the wall, and he's a forty-pound chimpanzee when it comes to sheer volume of visitors). Not too long ago, I would argue within myself that this requires that I set aside my initial prejudices and explore exactly what it is that pisses me off so much about this guy - he's probably not so bad once you get to know him. These days, I trust my gut. I make no comments about the intelligence, validity, or worthiness of the individual in question - I just back away slowly - a little like running across a slithering in the grass. Until you know for sure what sort of thing you've stirred up, stand back. Anyway, back to RSS - the reason I'm looking into it is because I'm using it - a lot - to aggregate things. For example, I haven't fully rebuilt my RSS list (I'm still looking for a working Dilbert Daily, for example), I've got a pretty good list of stuff that I like to read. However, I'm trying to figure out if I can put together my text in one file, then strip it through a filter of some sort to replace my html with appropriate RSS tags. Now, I know, there's plenty of automated tools available for pre-built "blogging" software, but I roll my own here. Partially because that's the way I've done it, and partially due to the fact that I see a number of people who try one package, want to switch to another, and have a hell of a time getting their data back. That's not a problem here. With the advent of my home NAS, I modified my batch file to copy the files around locally (two copies) and then upload to the server - that way I have three copies of my information, including one off-site. Belt and suspenders, that's me... Anyway - if anyone has a pointer to a good reference for RSS and wouldn't mind sharing, I'd like to get some more information out of it. I don't know if it would be possible for me to use the same text - that'd be ideal. Otherwise, I'll have to see, and write some sort of pre-processor. Which isn't where I wanted to go, but if I have to, I'll go there...
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Update At By the end of the day things were most definitely looking in the upward direction.
The last is the thing that pleases me the most - partially because I hate burned bridges. I never do it - you never know, no matter how much you'd like to, what you might need from someone some time in the future. And it also serves as another data point on my list of "hmmmm... perhaps what they gave as a reason isn't what they meant." I won't speculate further - given the NDA, and other internal knowledge I have with regards to them, I'm rather glad I'm not there. Put it this way - this year would have been my first to participate in profit sharing - and this year I'm glad I'm not there. Oh, and yes, I nearly posted yesterday - some minor issues with the brain forgetting to finish the job.
[Link] I'm going to start putting up a "Stumble of the Day" just to make this time into something slightly useful. Here's the first, an ignoble effort, but then, that's sometimes the thing about the internet.
[Link] Back in 1981, when I was only tangentally involved with the high school paper (I did layout and pasteup for a couple issues), we put out our annual hard-hitting and incisive issue on an important topic - drugs and drug use amongst our peers. The kids doing the reporting interviewed other students who had tried drugs, and told of the euphoria - and they interviewed others who told of the struggles to get off, and stay off, drugs. They also included a section on alcohol and cigarettes, which was fairly progressive at the time. Mind you, that was then. It was also, oddly, in a very, very conservative area, in a very, very Catholic school, and with a very, very sensitive population. We have, since then, gone backwards in some ways. Clearly, you want to be careful in the messages you send to students. However, confiscating all copies of a newspaper over an article about Birth Control and a Tattoo are ... well, what they are is clearly short-sighted. Amongst other problems. I suppose I should be more pro-abstainance, but let's face it, folks, when you're a teenager, you are in the middle of the Hurricane Katrina of hormones - everything's whirling around you, you have little control over your environment, your emotions are all over the map, your life is anyone's but yours, and you have physical changes which at a minimum can be embarrassing. Abstainance isn't going to work for everyone. Some people won't be able to keep it in their pants. That's just a fact of life. Insuring that these kids who ARE going to go out and have sex have no information at all about birth control only assures us of one more thing - more teenage mothers. Which leads to one of two things - abortions or young mothers. Which can, in turn, lead to a lifetime of guilt and issues you have to deal with, regardless - no matter which side of the issue you're on. I guess we'll get more and more of this with the increasingly "conservative" trend in judge appointments. It's odd - I wonder why people complain when judges interpret the law as being impartial, when they'd prefer partial. Then again, these are some of the same people who support a foetus's right to life up until it becomes a person - then they rail against any sort of help for the unwed mother they forced to have the child. And these are the same people who are pro-death penalty. Me, I have no such qualms. I don't like abortion. At all. However, I think it should remain safe and legal, because there are specific and valid situations where it is an option. Do I think it's for everyone? No. Do I have a uterus? No. But I think it should remain safe and legal. And, to head off at the pass the next nutball who says "but what if your kid..." I've done a lot of hard thinking, and if my daughter came to her mother to ask about birth control, I would, within limits, endorse the idea. Firstly, because Rhiannon gets such horrible cramps that it would be nice to know when it's coming, and secondly because I know she is smart enough to not have sex just for fun. She knows the dangers - beyond pregnancy - and she's smart enough to know to wait. Oh well. I'm sure someone will eventually bring the activist conservatives to their senses. It just seems to me that they advocate a "not fair, but fair to us" system. Me? I prefer a system which at the very least sucks to all parties. I might not like the existence of the KKK or the American Nazi Party, but I tolerate and support their existence because I believe they, too, have the right to exist. I don't think "under God" should be in the pledge of allegiance because we as a country allow for multiple religions. If a conservative really believes "under God" belongs in the pledge of allegiance, they should try saying it with "under Allah" or "under Buddha" or "under the giant flying spaghetti monster". From a strictly logical standpoint, all are equally viable - and likely. We have no concrete proof of the existence of God - and I, as a Roman Catholic, have to admit this. I have only my faith. I believe God exists. I know in my heart that He does. But to be fair - which is the cornerstone of our country (remember "all men are created equal"? Sure, back then it meant "all rich, middle-aged white men - you slave-type folk only count as 3/5 of a man, and don't even think about running off..." but we have, one hopes, advanced a bit in the 230 years since then), we have to allow others the right to insert their word for "God" - or skip it altogether. Then again, the fundamental problem is that some - not all - but some activist conservatives seek not to be fair, but to score points, and tip the balance in their favor. Just like some liberal activists like to do. My opinion - which is worth just about one eighth the weight of a penny these days - is that we should strive to be fair. No system can be completely free of bias - but we can work on making it fair. Or we can chuck it all and not even worry about it, and just let some people get screwed - and prepare to be screwed in return.
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Update At This morning Jack had Chess club which started at 8 am. We floundered through, checking four doors before we found one he could get in - which is frustrating. Back home, and then back to school with Rhiannon a little over an hour later so she could get in the door without losing her grip on the posterboard and construction paper needed for her latest project (apparently in science class she's a doctor, they've made a replica of the circulatory system, and now they have to do something with posterboard - I have no idea). Once that was done it was a "hurry up and wait" for the Minnegasco man - you see, our dryer began screaming some time back in ... yeah, I'm embarrassed to say it - June, I think. I turned off the gas, pulled it out, disconnected the vent, took the back off (eight screws), and then got scared. And so it sat until we got caught up on other bills and could call the gas/repair folk for help. Which we did, about two weeks ago. Today, the man came in, plugged the dryer in, ran it long enough to make his diagnosis, which proved correct - and he was out in five minutes. His diagnosis? You probably want to sit down for this. We spent much of the summer drying clothes on the outdoor line, and most of the fall schlepping clothes down to the laundromat to be dried, because ... a nail fell down the lint trap. And I was four lousy screws away from getting it fixed. I'll know better next time. And I confessed to my wife, who is, I'm sure, regaling her office and friends with tales of just how ... unfortunate I can be sometimes. Other than that, I spent a little time this evening putting together a playlist in Winamp. I'll admit it - I'm weird (like you needed that). I like "random" music, but I also like hearing my favorites. Long, long ago I learned that I could open up a Winamp playlist with any text editor, and "enhance" my list. In the playlist file, there's a header line, then each song has two line - one that starts with (on my machines, anyway), #EXTINF:### seems to be the title number. The number following #EXTINF is not a position-in-the-list identifier - it seems to be - yup, the length of the song in seconds. Then the song is identified by the title (contained within the MP3 file). On the second line for each song is the path (excluding drive and upper-level folders) to the file. First thing I did was create a playlist with ALL of my mp3 files on it. I know, it's a relatively small collection - we're still working our way through the LPs, getting those ripped, but for the moment, we're looking at a little over 11 gig of files. Then I removed the stuff my wife and kids want up there, and just leave my favorites. Then I save the playlist, open it up in any old editor (I think I used "edit" or maybe Wordpad, I don't recall), and then duplicated the lines for songs I really, really liked. Some I overdid, some I think I may have underdone. According to Winamp, my "playlist" will last for 894:57:13 - that's 894 hours, 57 minutes, 13 seconds. Or a little over five weeks. At 168 hours a week...
[Link] Anyway, I'm a happy boy...
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Update At Some of you will nod knowingly at this, but as a child, I distinctly remember television before the VCR/DVD/Home Theater, when you watched what was on the four or five channels you got. My family was indeed fortunate, for in most of my childhood, we had channel 2 (PBS), channel 4 (CBS), channel 5 (NBC), channel 7 (CBS, out of Alexandria), channel 9 (ABC), and channel 11 (independent). When I was about ten or so, there was "the big switch" - ABC decided that, given their highly-rated programs, they wanted to be on the highest-rated local affiliate (channel 5, owned by now-satelite-TV mogul Stan Hubbard, whom my former employer did tree care for), and made an offer Mr. Hubbard couldn't obviously refuse. So ABC jumped ship to channel 5. NBC, not wanting to take channel 9's ratings (they were so low that the anchor fellow ended up leaving to go into - believe it or not - politics - and was Minnesota's Senator for six years. Probably due to name recognition and sheer dumb luck - I don't remember who the DFL ran against her - I think the name was Ann Wynnia (sp?) - and Rod Grams won in a landslide - and was later sent packing, I think by a little guy by the name of Paul Wellstone), moved their programming to channel 11. Channels 2, 4, and 7 stayed the same, but we lost the old Merv Griffin show, amongst other programs that 11 dropped and 9 didn't pick up. It all worked out in the end - NBC ended up ruling television's prime-time and other times for many years, ABC found a home in the cellar and spent a few years digging holes, trying to figure out how to get lower, while CBS kept chugging along. But we were fortunate - we were a rural area, but because of an antenna that stood some eighty or so feet off the ground (not unusual in that part of the country), we got a whopping six channels. Later, when Big Lake figured out UHF stations, we got 29 and 41 - which was still a lot of programming. The reason I mention the number of channels was because, back in those days, television was very much an event-driven thing. I remember other things being cancelled - for example, for many years our Scout meetings were on Monday nights, so I didn't often get the chance to see MASH. But when the last MASH was scheduled, our scoutmaster moved or cancelled a couple of meetings so we could see the last couple. And there was usually a fair amount of discord when certain TV specials would be on. You wouldn't get much more than ten days or so worth of warning, as the TV guide would be your first notice that something was coming up. My mother was a crafty (as in making crafts) one, and back in the day when action figures were pretty much GI Joe, Barbie, and they were at least a foot tall, she liked to make stuffed animal-type replicas of our favorite TV characters - such as the Bumble. Mind you, she got one shot per year at seeing the fellow, until my father figured out how to photograph the television - which was another nightmare. Back in the days of a 21" television being big, us kids would lay on the floor in front of the TV to watch it - but when Dad photographed the TV, we had to stay out of the way. And that meant you sat in the back row - which was disappointing. Kids today can pretty much call up whatever they want from a wide range of sources - but I wonder if they've lost something because of that. Anyway, that detour down my memory lane was brought to you by last night's broadcast of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and reminiscing how much I miss things like the Little Drummer Boy and other Christmas programming that has gone by the wayside. Oh well. Someone owns the rights, and we'll soon see it on DVD. On to other loose ends. I guess, starting at the top, I should 'splain a bit about my ... distaste for all things Dave Winer. I think the guy's pretty smart, certainly talented - my objections to him are solely in the areas of personality. I think the guy's a bit of a stuffed shirt. But then, I suppose I would have to admit that most people who've managed to make something of themselves (at least in the business/technical sense) have to be, because they convince (or browbeat) others into their way of thinking. So it goes. I think he's a bright guy, sure, but my sole complaint about the RSS "standard" is that, as standards go, it's set by one guy. And there's little to no accountability to anything if he decides to change it. I'm still looking into it (and thank you all for suggesting things I need to have to get the ball rolling - it might just work), but I'm somewhat Microsoft-standard-centric at heart - that is, "thou shalt not roll out widely until version three hast been proclaimed on high, and then it is best to wait six months for some other poor schmucks to take the beating and figure out wherein we all will suffer." On other fronts, I was asked for the definition of OFIM (by a former Navy man, no less). While I do dearly wish I could claim that one for my own, my good friend Bob Walder popped that one in the lexicon right next to TGIF. Once you are confronted with the fact that both of those bookend a week, and the O stands for "Oh" and the "M" stands for "Monday" I think you'll be able to figure out the rest of the map. If not, please, then, let it percolate until your alarm clock goes off next Monday morning - the first semi-coherent thought going through your head after a lovely weekend will be OFIM, I guarantee it. As to thoughts on the Tennessee high school newspaper fracas (which has apparently sunk without a sigh, much less a fight), I'm gratified that some of you think I'm right, and flattered some of you think I'm wrong. However, I can't honestly debate the issue - because I'm still laughing at Duke Cunningham, who is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, an idiot. I say this because, let's face it, even I could figure out that the guy who sells his house for 2.6 million, then the next owner only gets a little under a million for it, is getting away with something. What's one got to do with the other? Well, I guess not much, except for the fact that we are simply being confronted by the simple fact that Jefferson was right - we need a revolution in this country to sweep away the priveleged over-class which has come to rule the government, and a complete shut-down-and-rebuilt of federal government, the court system, and the legal system (please note that I identify the court system separate from the legal system - one is populated by crooks and criminals, the other by lawyers - it's up to you to figure out the difference. If any). But that's not going to happen - because the powers that be don't dare allow it. And there are too many hogs eating at the trough who would turn their bloated carcasses on us and squash us if we - the people - decided to do something about it. So, instead, we queue for elections. And I see President Bush has published a plan to win the war in Iraq and bring the troops home. Let's see. How long ago did he land on the carrier to make the speech "war's over"? Seems to me that either he should have had this done when he invaded. The alternative, of course, is that this will be just as effective as he was with the initial invasion. Don't get me wrong - I'm not at all in favor of bringing the troops home until the job is done and done right. I don't want another "vietnam" scenario, where we re-think the whole thing for years afterwards. My personal opinion is that we should be putting about another 300,000 troops into Iraq, and set it up so we have a guy with an M16 for every acre of land in Iraq. We should get to work building that 300-foot high wall in the desert between Iraq and Syria (yeah, like that'll work - you'll get sand drifts on one side or the other, and they'll eventually walk right over), and we should be making it possible for the people of Iraq to form and select a new government. Then we should train their troops, and get the heck out of their way. But no, Donald Rumsfeld has spent his life learning how to run a war, and a lighter, meaner, more mobile military is what we need. Right. Let's see. On to today's news - about three inches of snow last night, more predicted for Friday night into Saturday - yup, must be December, or nearly so. Tonight promises to be "loads of fun" with Jack and his classmates doing a Christmas Concert. Sadly, they will share the stage and bill with the fifth, some of the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, Concert Band, and most likely two hours of my life - fifteen minutes I'll enjoy, and the rest will be... well, I guess I'll figure it's an hour and forty-five minutes off my time in Purgatory.
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Rhiannon: I don't like her because she called me a b... a bad name. Guess education's worth something. Now, watch while I tell him the Dictionary is a font of forbidden knowledge...
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Update At And yes, all of that came about in the posts from yesterday, which, because I didn't change the date/pointers, most of you may have missed. Sorry 'bout that. More later (now THERE'S a threat...)
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[Link] Hard to believe that little bundle who would fall asleep eating turned into a B honor roll kid. That's cool.
[Link] Even cooler now that I have this in my bookmarks.
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Update At I don't know about podcasting. In point of fact, I'm not exactly sure how in the hell someone recording and uploading audio is "new" and worthy of "invention". Then again, this is America, the land where some numbskull can sit there, think up an idea, patent the idea (without any working concept) and get the rights to extort money from companies that later make a full-working and profitable system that seems to perhaps maybe owe a slight nod in their direction - as in this week's NTP extortion of RIM and the Blackberry. Anyway, Winer and Curry are now yelling at eachother and trying to point out that someone's editing Wikipedia, an on-line site, and changing "history". Um, folks, I don't know about you, but the next person who says Wikipedia is an "authoritative source" ought to be lobbed out the window - at a minimum height of a thousand feet. Tangent #1 - Authoritative is not "editable by all" - authoritative is that which has been researched, cites facts, and does not allow for changes by those who may have a vested interest in the system. Tangent #2 - which is precisely the problem with intellectual property laws in this country. How one can "patent" a particular algorithm or "one-click buying" is beyond me. What it is, IMHO, is a monetary grab by large corporations who think they deserve something for smarts, instead of for hard work. Point of fact - we're all smart somewhere along the line. The race never goes to the smartest - nor necessarily the fastest. It typically goes to the one who works the hardest and keeps going when others give up. Of course, our society has managed to redefine "persistence" as "insanity". If you sat down and did the same thing over a thousand times, you'd be confined and medicated. When Thomas Edison did it, it was "invention". Oh well. Such is the world of today. Back to my point - Mr. Winer is one of those rare folks who seem to have what we used to call back in high school and college "shitty mitts". The expression was adopted from a monk who shall remain nameless, who said "he's one of those shitty mitt types. Everything he touches gets a little dirty." My hesitancy at getting something home-made going with RSS is in the same ballpark. I want to develop some tool that can filter and adjust my HTML to RSS - I'm thinking a simple pre-processor that first reads a configuration file with code-to-code translation (column one is HTML, column two is the replacement RSS code), then read in a file (input via dialog box or command line) and output a file (same input name with the extension XML? Dunno). That sounds like the most flexible of tools, overall, and gives me the optimum chance to deal with odd crap that might get changed/modified in the future.
[Link] Perhaps it was an attempt to avoid controversy - thinking that all who might complain about such programming (The Little Drummer Boy is the only Christmas TV show aside from "It's a Charlie Brown Christmas" to alude to the "reason for the season") would be out or passed out for the evening, I suppose, but boy, that's bad timing. Oh well. As a child, those Rankin-Bass stop-action Christmas shows were just a joy to watch. Nothing today comes even close. The stop-motion work of Nick Park and the Wallace and Gromit characters is far, far too smooth and realistic - the Rankin Bass stuff was herky-jerky and you forgot what you were looking at - and instead lost yourself in a story. I sometimes wonder, now, with the growth of beautiful animations and wonderfully realistic scenery designed and built by computer what - if anything - will be left for the story-teller? Sure, a good story will always sell - but these days it seems that the good story is lost in the whiz-bang special effects. I hope that things like Harry Potter keep that realm alive. The ability to lose myself in a good book, to read for hours, and then look up to find I've lost much of the day or evening is long, long gone. I'm much too responsible now (and too distracted) to find anything like that. I'm sure it's not the authors - I read the giants as a child, and was quickly and irrevocably lost in the worlds of Tolkein, Heinlein, Lewis, Eddings, Brooks, and others who could weave a word so well that I still to this day remember reading a forty-odd page section from the first Sword of Shannara book, wherein he told of a city undergoing a seige - I don't think I took a breath through the entire forty pages, it was that gripping. They don't write 'em like that any more, that much is certain.
[Link] Anyway, back to the slow news day. We got up around noonish (yes, we were tired), decided not to go anywhere, because of the snowstorm (they predicted "flurries" last night. We got about four or five inches. All so light and fluffy you could blow it away - but that doesn't prevent it from gumming up the works), and stayed home. I got up, did a bit of cleaning, helped Rhiannon in sweeping out the laundry room, and then - apparently - became tired. So I lay down in my chair around 3 pm, and someone quickly moved the sun and clocks ahead to 6 pm. Tired? Perhaps. So then I got up and recommenced (as they say in the south) to search for my missing toolbox. Actually, it's Jack's toolbox, but it's the one I've temporarily co-opted to store all the various essential hand tools. The toolbox was necessary for a toilet repair - the downstairs toilet had been having some problems for a while now. For the first two years we were in the house, the flap on the tank leaked something disturbingly regular. I finally got that fixed, and then some months later (about two ago) the damned thing would run and run and not shut off. Today, through the use of Stumble (and yes, this is a long way round to getting to today's "Stumble of the Day") I found Toiletology - disturbing, but completely useful, directions on fixing a busted toilet. And wherein I found this page, wherein symptom #2 explained EXACTLY what my problem was. The biggest problem was in finding the image near the top of the page - the site's directions say to click on "view image" - one of my Firefox plugins is Image Zoom, which allows me to zoom an image up to 400% of it's size or to make it fit the window. Unfortunately, this is one of those "enlightened" sites wherein the damned site designer figured he'd get one past us all by blocking right-clicking. (Aside - my wife just discovered that not only is cable TV a vast wasteland this time of year, the steaming puddle of poo extends to - you guessed it - cable access, wherein our favorite local watering hole's weekly Karoke (sp? Who gives a rat's butt) is taped for later re-broadcast. Thus determining once and for all that me and my two other camping buddies will NOT be consuming enough alcohol to get up and sing "I Am Woman" by Helen Reddy. Some things just should not be saved for future generations, no matter the horror or learning potential. End of Aside). Fool. Poltroon. Piss-ant. Feeble-minded, slack-jawed, single-celled organism. I know wherin my cache resides. In this case, it was
C:\documents and settings\jdominik\local settings\mozilla\firefox\profiles\some 8-charcter long useless identifier ending in .default\cache Which I then sorted by date/time and used IRFAN to view - if it wasn't a graphic, it told me. If it was, it showed it. I found it on my third try - my fourth file. Let me know if you need it, I'll e-mail it to you. Anyway, I needed the image to see if I could find the valve seal. Which wasn't identified on the diagram, but forwarned is forarmed, and I went in, sat down, removed the old arm and seal, replaced it with a new one from the new kit, and put the cap back on (used the new one rather than the old). Turned the water on and we were back to a two-toilet family. Well, a reliable two-toilet family. I like that. And that, sadly, is about all I accomplished today. But hey, it's nearly 11 pm - almost bedtime for me...
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Update At Fortunately I am not decent folk. Up, into the shower, and out, and I felt like half a man (which is about where I fit into the population - so it goes), which is about half more than this day needed. We headed to church, caught up with some friends, then came home after mass. We turned about and were back out by 1:20 pm, over to Barnes & Nobles, for Rhiannon to participate with her bell choir (from choir). They played for an hour, and the kid's school benefited from it because coupons were handed out - something like 10% of the sales on coupons went to the church, so it was a worthy stop. We did a bit of Christmas shopping, then headed to the grocery store - finished that mess up at almost 6 pm, came home, and fairly fell down pooped. Yeah, it was busy. Next week we were checking the schedule; before-school events four of five days, evening events five straight days. It's gonna be a long, hopefully fruitful week.
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Copyright information here..
The young lady shown at right there is bright. Very much so. She's also hard working. Despite having volleyball, her brother's soccer, a camping trip, Girl Scouts, choir, band, and now DI starting up (along with chores at home, a birthday, and a few other significant events here and there), it looks entirely like the little girl will make it onto the B Honor Roll for her school. Sure, A would be nice, but given the fact that the only honor roll I ever made it onto was "honored by having his own chair in the principal's office during grade school", I'm quite, quite proud of her.
