Computerjargon : Rebooted
01/12/2006
09:09 AM : Brokeback Mountain Social Commentary
Earlier this week a local radio station was discussing the movie Brokeback Mountain . The morning show consists of 2 men and 2 women. One of the men (We'll call him #1 for the sake of argument) on the show had seen the movie. The other male host (male guy #2) began ranting about how he wouldn't be caught dead going to see a movie about gay men. #1 argued that there was no more than 60 seconds of actual homosexual sexual content and referred to the straight dude's guide to Brokeback Mountain.
#2 continued to rant, stating, "Even 60 seconds is too much." His commentary seemed a little excessive, then he opened up the phone lines. Soon, it had turned into an all out gay-bashing segment.
I was stunned that I was actually hearing this on the radio. I understand that some radio stations want an edge to their content but this is not typically one of those stations. I tried to keep my liberal opinions in check. But I still felt their comments crossed the line.
I sent the following letter:
Hello -
I was more than a little put off by your commentary about the movie Brokeback Mountain this morning. I thought it was quite disrespectful of gays. Taking calls was inviting the ignorant out to showcase their stupidity.
I don't think you would have had the same type of conversation if it were a movie involving black people. Try this next time you want to talk about homosexuals, replace the word "gay" with the word "black" and see if you're still willing to say the same thing. Would you come out on the air and state you will not see a movie about black people? If you are a decent and respectful person you wouldn't.
You are doing nothing more than perpetuating inequality and creating barriers between people. Shame on you.
Jason.
P.S. I'm straight.
Just to be fair, their form-letter response:
Thank you for your comments, and I'm sorry if you found our positions offensive.
Courtney pointed out that I felt I needed to tell them I was not gay. I was trying to make the point that if I was offended as a straight man, imagine how a gay person must feel. Does being straight make my argument stronger or weaker? I don't know for certain.
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01/10/2006
08:24 AM : A Million Little Things
I finished A Million Little Pieces over the holidays. I ranted earlier about it becoming slow and repetitive in the middle of th book. I'm here to say the last 100 pages made up for it. I still stand by the comment that after Frey's turning point (around page 140) the book goes downill. It's still good enough to read, though.
The Smoking Gun has a very interesting investigative report into the stories told by James Frey. They attempt to discredit Frey by illustrating some creative embellishments he took in the book. During one instance with the police Frey mumbles "Fucking Pig" which lands him in deep do-do with the cops. TSG pulls the police report and finds no mention of the comment and concludes that his embellishments are too much and he's full of crap. Hardly a strong argument in my mind. Of course, this comes from an admitted embellisher. :-)
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01/08/2006
22:42 PM : Stuck on Hamachi
I've fallen in love with an application called Hamachi. It is a peer-to-peer tool that allows anyone to create secure "private" networks (VPNs) over the internet. Typically VPNs are only used by businesses and the super-nerdy. Hamachi allows the common folk to easily create one.
You're probably thinking, "That's great, Jason, but why do I need this?" Well, you probably don't. But I do. It allows me to create a small, personal network of computers over the internet. Whether I'm at home or at a friends house I can access my computers as if I'm at my house. VPNs can be created without Hamachi but it's complicated. Very, very complicated.
Even better, Hamachi allows me to create more than one private network. I can create a network of friends and/or family. We can easily share our (legal) files. No more monkey business with torrents, FTP, and email box quotas.
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01/06/2006
08:42 AM : How to Lose Your Hair
A few friends at work bet their hair on the Rose Bowl. Check out
Murphy's site for the results.
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01/04/2006
12:40 PM : While I'm on the Topic of the Gym
Since I'm ranting about the gym anyways, I'd like to add the fact that I have a hard time taking the workers at the gym seriously if they aren't in shape. I'll cut all the machine wipers and the card scanning greeters some slack since their job doesn't involve fitness directly. And honestly, the trainers are always in good shape. But have you seen the sales people? Christ, I don't know if they've ever stepped foot out of their office and onto a treadmill. I won't buy anything from anyone who hasn't tried their own product.
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12:15 PM : Gym Membership in the New Year
When I joined the gym two years ago Frank warned me that the gym becomes crowded right after the New Year. Whether it be the gluttony of the holidays or new resolutions, people tend to show up for about a month after January 1st.
This year I decided to pay particular attention to new members, to see if this prediction as true. Since Thanksgiving I have noticed a steady increasing stream of sign-ups. (If you are wondering how I know about new sign-ups, I work out at the prime time after work and hit the treadmill nearest to the sign-up desk.) Over the course of 45 minutes I noticed about 3-4 new sign ups each day.
I went to the gym for the first time in '06 last night and, as predicted, the place was booming. But I seemed to recognize that most were the same people who are always there. They were all just there at the same time.
I happened to notice that many were fidgeting with new gadgets. Whether it be a new iPod, a fancy new heart monitoring watch, or some new fitness outfit, many people seemed to have come to the gym to give their new dodads a trial run. People were walking into each other as they pushed, plugged, and turned on their gizmos.
It seems the gifts of gizmos has driven this years influx of gym rats. I'll let you know if they're still around in February.
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01/03/2006
08:15 AM : Hacking on the Mississippi
I recently went to visit my grandparents who live on the Mississippi River in La Crescent, MN. For the longest time their neighborhood has been comprised of cottages and cabins. 20 years ago their river-front property wasn't more than a weekend get-away for most. But over the course of the last 8 or so years builders have moved in, bulldozed most of the cottages, and built monsterous houses that span entire property lots.
I don't typically bring my laptop with me when I go to visit. My grandparents use dial-up for internet. This time I decided to, just to have something to occupy my time. Before I left I had installed an application called NetStumbler that does a pretty good job locating and listing wireless access points. I fired it up at the grandparents and was surprised to find someone in the neighborhood had a Linksys router. Gitty with excitement I got to work.
The signal was weak and seemed to come and go. I spent the better part of a night trying to figure out where the signal was coming from. After a little "war-walking" (That's what Courtney calls it) I found that it was coming from a house to the south. The signal was still too faint for my to get solid communication to the DHCP server on the router. I attempted to set my IP address manually guessing the network default was either a 10.0.x or 192.168.0.x based network. I had no luck and gave up for the night.
The next morning the fog was hanging a little lower than before and the clouds were moving in. Perfect for bouncing a wifi signal my way! I fired up my laptop again and started away. After letting my Intel wifi card do its thing for a few extra minutes I was finally able to retrieve an IP address from the DHCP server, on the 192.168.1.x network. I was sooo close! Damn! The signal was still very weak and I had a hard time doing much of anything. I pulled up a web page and showed off my trimuph to the family. They were less than impressed but it solitified my nerd status.
So I did it. I accomplished getting on to the internet through a wireless connection no faster than my grantparents dial-up connection that already existed. But it was fun nonetheless.
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12/29/2005
11:43 AM : Bathroom Backlog
It seems no matter where I work there is always a shortage of men's bathrooms. When I worked in Plymouth the company was mostly women. I think the breakdown was something like 65-75% women. You would think with a smaller per-captia ratio that the men's bathroom would be more readily available, but it wasn't. Granted, the women were hurtin' worse. They had it so bad they were forced to use men's bathrooms when no one was looking (and when no men occupied it). And we all know how my gender tends to leave the state of bathrooms.
Businesses in the warehouse district have it tough. The old buildings were built in a time when a single shared bathroom per floor was common and the density of workers was light. I work now with twice as many men with the same amount of stalls as did Plymouth. It's pretty much booked from 11am to 3pm during the day. Thus, we have to get creative sometimes.
I had a discussion this morning where we compared the quality of restrooms on the other floors versus our own. Although we couldn't come to an agreement whether 5th floor was better than 8th floor, we did decide that anywhere was better than the one we have. The local repository invokes the same emotions as do the dank restrooms of St. Paul bars.
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12/28/2005
08:56 AM : Famous Places and Famous Faces
I chuckled a little bit after reading St. Paul's
Dubliner bar has a cameo in an upcoming
film along with
Nye's in Minneapolis. The Dubliner has always been a favorite of mine, not too big, not too small. I can't wait for it's silver screen debut.
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12/23/2005
12:36 PM : Darwin Vs. Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - A satirical argument for teaching intelligent design in school. Somehow I don't think this rationale will help the Intelligent Designers plight.
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12/21/2005
10:53 AM : I Broke the Breadmaker
I broke the breadmaker this weekend. I decided to cleanup the kitchen a bit. I put away some clean dishes and put some dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I was left with the odds and ends to clean by hand. If there's one thing I don't do it's dishes by hand. I will outright refuse to do them. I must have been in a good mood because I decided to do them anyway.
I cleaned some wine glasses, I cleaned the often-used popcorn popper. When it came time to clean out the breadmaker I was a little stumped. I wasn't sure how I should clean it. It has only two movable and removable parts (the kneeding blade and bread bucket). I removed the pieces and dunked them in the water. Still, the innards of the maker had bread residue all over it. I knew better than to dunk the entire maker into a sink full of water so I did the next best thing.
I grabbed the sink hose, turned the maker on it's side, and sprayed the inside of the maker. The pressure wash did a great job of getting all the gunk out of the tight corners at the bottom of the maker. I put it away and congratulated myself on a job well done. Courtney would be pleased.
At the grocery store I stopped and picked up some more bread mix. We don't use our breadmaker very often but the last loaf of bread was excellent. I thought I should make more.
I plugged in the clean maker, threw all the ingredients into the bread bucket and pushed one of the 5 buttons on the maker. Nothing seemed to happen. So I tried pushing one of the other buttons. No luck. Figuring I was doing something wrong I had to get out the manual. The manual confirmed that all that was needed to start the baking was to push the button.
So I pushed it again. Nothing. Not even a blip on the display screen. So I did what any normal male would do when faced with a simple instrument that appears to be broken, I shook it. After a good shaking I noticed a large puddle of water underneath the maker. A flood of panic came over me. I had broken the breadmaker.
In hopes of a miracle I started fidgeting with it some more. I tipped it on it's side, I tried to shake the water out, but nothing was going to make it work. I was pissed and I was hungry. I broke the bad news to Courtney. She didn't seem as upset as I was. She calmed me down and suggested we replace it. I was defeated.
I continued with some other baking, making some cookies and fudge. I couldn't get over that I had broken the breadmaker. I am such a careful person and a careless moment had now ruined by entire day. I kept the breadmaker on top of the oven in hopes of drying it out. By the end of the day water was condensing on the inside of the LCD display. I gave it one last try but it refused to work. By this time Courtney had already rescued the bread incredients and was baking the bread the old fashion way in the oven. She made some great cinnimon and raisin bread.
Courtney's loaf is almost gone this morning. I've been having a few slices for breakfast each day this week. I was hit with the need for fresh bread again during breakfast. Refusing to give up, I took out the broken maker while my toast cooked and plugged it in. I started mashing the buttons one after another. BEEP BEEP BEEP The breadmaker sprang to life. "Oh my god, I've done it! I've fixed the breadmaker!" I ran into the bedroom and told Courtney that it was a Christmas miracle. The breadmaker works!
Delighted, I quickly threw together the ingredients for a loaf of honey wheat berry bread. I am tickled pink with anticipation to the smell of fresh bread when I get home this evening.
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