I just saw an anti net neutrality ad on TV, while I was drinking my morning coffee. The ad presented several snippets from newspaper editorials. One, from the Portland Oregonian said this:
Congress could unwittingly interfere with the development of a more robust Internet…
I don’t know about that; I do know, however, that any assertion that starts with “Congress could unwittingly interfere” is more likely to be right than wrong.
-k-
Technorati Tags: netneutrality, USCongress
It’s my week in the on-call barrel again. The weekend stint has gone smoothly so far. I was awakened a couple hours ago to check out a recalcitrant system. All was well, but I had to hang around until the application folks gave the all clear. That has happened, and darned if I’m not wide awake now. Nothing good on teevee now either.
-k-
A month or two before his death, Rob “Acidman” Smith was interviewed by Atlanta TV station WAGA. Blog d’Elisson has posted the interview on his site. The interview link is here. Rob was a soft-spoken person; this fact may not have been obvious from reading his blog; at least, it wasn’t to me. One interview segment starts with Rob pickin’ his guitar and singing. That little part alone is worth checking out. Thanks to Elisson for posting this.
-k-
Technorati Tags: acidman
The Nextel Cup Fall Challenge has started at Fantasy Sports. Point totals are reset to zero, and new teams are picked. As it turns out, the $10 million funny money salary cap was not sufficient to reconstitute my team from the Spring Challenge. So I pieced together a new crew, and after race one, I rank 1174th out of 8707 teams. Not a terrible first race. But, to indulge in some richly deserved whining, I’ll point out I’d have been a lot better if Ryan Newman had shown some patience, and not wrecked Tony Stewart on lap 100 of 300. Newman was a lap down, and Tony was leading at the time. I trust that mentioning that Tony is on my team is redundant at this point. And, I’d always thought more of Newman than that. However, 4 laps later, Newman got taken out by the hapless Michael Waltrip. I wish no one ill, but this latter incident brought a smile to my old face. Prompt justice is nice sometimes.
-k-
Technorati Tags: NASCAR, ryannewman, tonystewart
Not Hubert Horatio Humphrey, nor even Hubert Horatio Hornblower, for those of you who can remember some Jimmy Carter-isms. This HHH is our weather for next week: Hazy, Hot, and Humid. Temperatures in the 90s, with the humidity charging hard to match. Doubtless this will all be punctuated by the occasional popup trash-floating thunderstorm.
This kind of weather makes me count the days until autumn.
-k-
For SWMBO’s and my AARP memberships. I’ll get those in the mail ASAP. We need those car rental and hotel discounts continuing well into our dotage.
-k-
Technorati Tags: AARP
Barbaro has taken a turn for the worse. Barbaro’s attending surgeon, Dr. Dean Richardson, says:
Barbaro has a severe case of laminitis in his left hind leg _ a painful, often fatal disease caused by uneven weight distribution in the limbs.
So, it could be a matter of time, and not much time at that. And, from the article, the part that really choked me up:
“His ears are up, he’s bright, he’s looking around,” Dr. Dean Richardson said Thursday. “If you look at this horse, it’d be hard to put him down.”
It would be a real shame. What a champion, with days of glory that at best will not be realized. Hang on, Barbaro.
-k-
Technorati Tags: barbaro
How long do you suppose it will be before the RIAA demands payment from NASA for the wake-up call songs that are transmitted up to the shuttle? After all, these radio signals are being beamed into the endlessness of space, where they have the potential of being heard by countless interplanetary travelers. Think of it as reverse XM Radio. I won’t even discuss the possibility of the astronauts’ time-shifting these broadcasts.
-k-
Slowly but surely, the Ruby WayTM is making its way into my befuddled old-school brain. And darned if it isn’t a great language. I’m fighting the the tendency, ingrained over the years, to revert back to Unix shell-like constructs. I have no doubt that my finished product will still express some of those persuasions. Hope springs eternal, as there is always a version 2. I will, however, have some YAML-powered configuration files in the first release.
I read someplace that the only, if not the best way, to learn a new language, is to write programs in it. I’ll now testify that for me, that observation is true.
-k-
The shuttle Discovery is safely back home. I’ll admit to taking the space program for granted for a lot of years. My naïveté regarding space travel has since been profoundly shattered. So let’s be thankful for a successful flight and return. Welcome back!