| Date: | 2009-08-12 23:02 |
| Subject: | Moving... |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  quixotic |
I have moved my blog because I am tired of waiting for LiveJournal to catch up to the last five years of advancements in blogging technology. To get to the right place just go to www.chuckwolber.com and it will redirect you to my blog (which is at chuckwolber.blogspot.com)
Hey LiveJournal staff, would it kill you to enable javascript like the rest of the world? How about decent bulk management tools that do not require me to give up a whole weekend writing code to an API?
So anyway, all of my blog entries and comments have been imported to my new blog, so there is no loss of information. I have deleted all but a few entries here. What is left (other than this post), are a few of the entries that I feel are worth repeating. If you want to link to any of them, please link to the identical version on my current blog as I will eventually delete the remaining posts from this account.
Sorry for the inconvenience...
..Ch:W..
This is the the vision John McCain inspires:
Photo Credit: http://www.brettmarty.com/
This is the vision that Barack Obama inspires:
Photo Credit: http://obeygiant.com/post/obama
So if you got caught in a colossal backup this morning on I-5 going North through Federal Way, I didn't cause it, but I was involved... You're probably going to want to sit down for this one...
I'm making my way through the I-5 grind this morning, as usual. The wet roads and drizzle were making the usual commute even slower. Traffic is doing the accordion thing the whole way. There's no point in changing lanes or caring about who's passing who, so I move into the middle lane and throw on NPR. Remember, it's slippery out and Seattle drivers do weird things when the road gets wet so I'm trying to keep plenty of distance between the car in front of me...
All of a sudden, *WHAM* someone glances off of my rear bumper. I look behind me and notice that rather than pulling over to the right so we can exchange information, the car appears to be ... moving past me to my left! So now I'm thinking it's probably some drunk driver who didn't notice that they hit me. But as it drives past me, I look into the car and ... *THERE'S NO ONE IN THE CAR*!
I did a double take and confirmed it; the car was *COMPLETELY EMPTY*. Could it be some remote control experiment gone horribly bad?!?!?!
I lose track of the car for a second while I'm fumbling with my emergency flashers, and then notice serveral cars are pulling over to the side. Clearly I'm not the only one involved so I pull over with the rest of the group. We all get out of our cars and confirm that, yes, the car was indeed without a driver or any other human occupant!
One of the drivers goes walking back to the end of the line of cars and actually locates the driver of the "ghost car" and pieces together the story. Apparently the driver, who turns out to be 4 months pregnant, decided that the brakes on her car didn't feel right. Rather than pull the car over and call for help, she bailed out of the car in the middle of I-5 morning rush hour traffic, crossed the HOV lane *ON FOOT* and let the car drive on by itself... empty... through morning rush hour traffic...
After sorting it all out, I asked the state patrol officer if this was the most bizarre accident she'd ever seen, and she shook her head and said yes...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
There are those among us who have seen a rational shift on the inside. Seek them out. They can help guide you.
The child who starts smoking at an early age and turns from the habit.
The alcoholic who finds life without alcohol.
The cult member who finds himself.
The vagrant who learns to seek stability.
The academic who has changed their mind based on new evidence.
The person who looks in the mirror and sees possibility of change.
The person who no longer fears.
| Date: | 2006-10-26 10:11 |
| Subject: | Pemco Billing |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  frustrated |
PEMCO is our auto insurance company. Their claims service and rates basically kick butt. I've only had to make one claim, but they were shockingly good. They handled everything very professionally and efficiently. There's another shoe here and it's dropping right about... now. When it comes to paying the monthly bill, they stink with the stench of a thousand rotting camels. You essentially have two options:
1) Pay the full amount at once.
2) Let them take the money out of your account on a monthly basis.
They apparently do not allow you to simply pay on a monthly basis using something like your online billpayer. They only want to play the monthly payment game if they get to take the money for you. Whats even better, if the payment "bounces" even once, they silently stop taking monthly payments and let your policy quietly lapse. Thankfully that didn't happen to us.
To go with option 2, you have to send them a voided check. If you don't have a voided check, you've got to go to your bank and get documentation that you can fax to pemco. Apparently it's not ok to simply give them your routing number and account number over the phone because "we need to verify that it's your account". You see, it's for my security ;) You have to fax or mail in a copy of a voided check. Uggghhhh, I call BS! I don't even have to do that with payroll anymore at my job.
They can very easily take your information over the phone and simply call the bank on your behalf to verify that the account belongs to you. "Oh no, we can't do that because of privacy rules!". Once again I call BS. Credit card companies do it *EVERY* time you have a transaction. It's no longer enough in most cases to simply give a credit card number, they need your "billing address" too so that they can match up all of that information. In the case of the insurance company, they'd simply say to your bank "Hi, we're Pemco, we've got a customer named blah blah blah who lives at blah blah blah who claims to have account number XYZ123, is that correct?" and the bank would say, "Yes" or "No", just like the credit card company.
Ugggh, get with the new millenium PEMCO. It shouldn't be this hard to give you money!
Interesting approach to boosting solar cell efficiency. In a nutshell, solar cells cannot convert light from the lower end of the spectrum into energy. Some very smart people have figured out how to chemically combine two low energy photons into one high energy photon which can then be used by solar cells to generate electricity. Linked here.
I couldn't find Java code examples anywhere on how to get log4j to log to Unix syslog. I'm sure they're out there, but I'll be damned if I could find them. I spent a few hours with log4j today and managed to decode what's going on. Here it is in all it's glory:
import org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.SimpleLayout;
class FOO {
public static void main(String args[]) {
FOO foo = new FOO();
}
public FOO () {
SimpleLayout layout = new SimpleLayout();
SyslogAppender appender = new SyslogAppender(layout, "localhost", SyslogAppender.LOG_DAEMON);
Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
logger.addAppender(appender);
logger.info("This is just a test");
}
}
I'd write more about how cool log4j is, but I'm under a deadline and have to get back to work...
P.S. If this still doesn't work, then you probably forgot to make your syslog daemon listen to a socket....
I got my oil changed yesterday at one of those Grease Monkey(TM) shops. They're annoying because they always want to upsell you on stuff (and yet I keep going back). This time they wanted to sell me a PCV valve for about $17.00 and an air filter for about $20.00. I know the air filter was about 4 times cheaper if I bought it myself. As for the PCV valve, I'd never changed one out, but from the looks of it, I knew it was pretty cheap to buy. In addition, they had it out in about 30 seconds, so I knew it wasn't hard to replace either.
Today on my way home from work, I stopped into an auto parts (Auto Zone) store to get a PCV valve and an air filter. The PCV valve cost me about $5.00 and the air filter would have cost me about $5.00, but I opted for the snazzy KnR filter that lasts for the lifetime of the car. I got out of there for about $45.00. For my money, I got a new PCV valve and an air filter that will never need to be replaced. If I'd opted for the Grease Monkey(TM) parts, it would have cost me $37, but I'd still have to replace the air filter every 12,000 miles. I figure if I drive my car for 96,000 miles I'll break even on the KnR filter, although I haven't factored in inflation against the potential ROI if I'd bought the cheap filter and simply invested the other $35. If I always bought Grease Monkey(TM) filters, then the KnR filter would pay itself back in about 24,000 miles.
So anyway... Now that I had this PCV valve, I needed to install it. After a bunch of poking around, I found it sitting right next to the oil cap. It was incredibly easy to replace. I just pulled out the old one and plunked in the new one. Didn't even require any tools.
I was going to post the transcript of the online chat that Representative Foley (R-FL) had with that 16 year old congressional page. After getting about 2 pages into it, I was disgusted and decided it wasn't worth the baggage to have it in this blog. What I will say is that it's now becoming clear that GOP leadership knew about this for a very long time and, like the Catholic church, tried to cover it up.
A poster named VannaB summed it up nicely in response to this article: "...isn't the irony so delicious? I mean here's the GOP, party of "family values" and the first line of defense against the so-called "gay agenda" and here's one of their own...one of their important, powerful own, in a Congressional seat they need BAD, and oooopsie he's a pedaphile. You can't write scripts soapier than this."
The Democrats had a very unique opportunity this year to take back what was lost in 1994. Unfortunately they have blown it in a colossal way. Instead of spending time saying what they were going to fix, like the Republicans did in 1994 with the Contract with America, they've resorted to vague statements about "real" national security and how much better they are than the scoundrels that are currently in office. If they'd spent 2005 creating a detailed plan with easy to understand bullet points like the Republicans did in 1994, we'd be in for a landslide power shift.
Fortunately though, they haven't hurt their chances. All of the reputable polls show things shaping up to be a 50/50 congress and a 216D - 219R senate. All in all, not too bad, but it could have been a lot better.
| Date: | 2006-09-25 09:17 |
| Subject: | Life in Iraq |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  sad |
I've never really understood what life was like in Iraq after the US invasion until now. This article makes me sad...
| Date: | 2006-09-15 13:52 |
| Subject: | Overheard... |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  amused |
Overheard in the office today:
P: "It's 4:27am in Tehran (Iran) right now..."
S: "Which year?"
*rimshot*
This just in from our friends at the FRC...
Washington Briefing: Value Voters Summit in Washington,
D.C. The speaker line-up matches any national
political/policy convention: Sen. Santorum, Sen. Brownback,
Attorney General Gonzales, Gov. Huckabee, Gov. Romney, Sean
Hannity, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Rep.
Marilyn Musgrave, and so many more. As news reports
circulate about the values voter it's time to show that we
are a force to be reckoned with...this is not just a
convention, it's a call to ACTION.
(emphasis added by me)
If that concentration of extreme right wing ideology doesn't scare you, I have no idea what will. What's even scarrier is that our current sitting attorney general will be in attendance. While there is nothing illegal about it, it sure does scare the crap out of me...
Today Bailey played his first real note on the Trumpet. It was a low C. He was able to match his tone to mine pretty well.
| Date: | 2006-08-24 13:33 |
| Subject: | Plan B OTC |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | amused |
I'm sure this will make some heads explode today...
These days I pretty much exclusively listen to C89.5 on the radio. They've got a great mix of heart pounding dance music. Lots of fun to listen to. I used to listen to AM talk radio, but finally had to stop because it was adversely affecting my mood. Old habits are hard to break through and about once a week I'm compelled to do the rounds on the AM dial. At the far right of the dial at 1090 is Air America a left wing station. On the far left of the dial is 570 KVI a moderate right wing station. In the middle is 770 KTTH, the ultra conservative right wing wacko station. Only in Seattle would the liberals be on the extreme right, the moderate conservatives on the extreme left and the wackos right smack dab in the middle.
So anway, today I landed on 770 for a while and caught some of the Rush Limbaugh show. It was only about two minutes, but I could have filled about 3 or 4 pages of commentary on the logical falacies he spews. There's definitely a job opportunity for someone well versed in linguistic logic to poke holes in what he says on a daily basis. Something like "Rush Watch" would be a real hit, especially if everything was supported by clear and unambiguos logic (even when it was inconvenient to one side or the other). It would definitely provide lots of fodder to his critics and help people wake up to the BS he's spewing. At worst, it would force him to spend a lot of time watching what he says more carefully and backtracking (more than he usually does) to "clarify" himself. With his gift for speaking, it might actually make him a useful asset to this country! *GASP*
In the 2 minutes I listened to him today, he spaketh this little gem, "...you need to stop worring about your rights and start worrying about your responsibilities...". He was speaking within the context of this country, "...being at war..." and that it's your responsibility to support the war effort.
Where does one begin with this... It's a free country, I don't *HAVE* to agree with the war, nor do I have to support it. That's not the most important part though. The key is to see that he's trying to separate the concepts of rights and responsibilities. If you care about your rights, you should know that your rights are your responsibility! That's, presumably, why we're at war, because we take our rights seriously enough that we're willing to attack someone who would dare threaten our soverign land.
I do support Rush's right to spew this drivel though. Let the market decide if it's interesting enough to pay him to do it...
Bought a couple of flat panel monitors at Fry's today. Normally when you exit the store, the door person checks your receipt to make sure you're not trying to steal stuff. I'd found out a while ago that they really can't do that unless they think you're stealing something. As I left the store, instead of handing over my receipt like a "good citizen", I simply refused to give it over saying, "I don't have to show it to you". The door person looked a bit bemused, and then simply said, "Ok". And that was that. It was a good feeling. It won't change the world, but hopefully more people will start to see this as the invasion of privacy that it is and start to feel more comfortable standing up for their rights.
I found this on Craigslist "Best Of" today. I think it says a lot about the realities of animal shelters and it's worth repeating...
What really happens when you take your dog or cat to a shelter…Graphic
Date: 2006-07-06, 12:15PM PDT
I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all...a view from the inside if you will. First off, this is a forum to for adoption and/or rehoming as clearly stated in the rules. All of you breeders/sellers on craigslist should not only be flagged (and I hope the good people on craigslist will continue to do so with blind fury), but you should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know…that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs. The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her…”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard…”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her…we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”. Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you…your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off…sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy…if it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc…) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted. If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed…it may get a stay of execution…not for long though. Most get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression…even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles…chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment. Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”. First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash…they always look like they think they are going for a walk…happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the breaks when we get to the door…it must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process…they will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk…I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves. When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed…waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind…it was just an animal and you can always buy another one right?
I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head…I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter. Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.
My point to all of this…DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!
Hate me or flag me if you want to…the truth hurts and reality is what it is…I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this thing on craigslist and it made me want adopt”…that would make it all worth it.
As I mentioned previously, patterns begin to emerge no matter how complex the topic. I just read an interesting article over at The Nation on Tony Perkins. Apparently the golden boy himself has consistently forgotten to mention that he was suspended from his job as a Baton Rouge police officer and subsequently resigned. This wouldn't be so bad, as it happens all the time for a variety of reasons that aren't always that bad. In his case though, he put a lot of officers lives in danger by failing to report to his superiors, a plot by anti-abortion protestors to overrun a barracade and storm an abortion clinic. Even this, in a sick and twisted sort of way, could be excused if Tony Perkins truly felt that he was somehow preserving life by putting others in danger. What's pretty inexcusable is how Tony Perkins conveniently forgets to mentioned the "suspended and later resigned for putting officers lives in danger" when he proudly trumpets that he is a "former police officer for the Baton Rouge police department".
Of lesser consequence is the revelation that Tony Perkins killed his political career by paying $82,500 for David Duke's list of political contributors. For those who don't recall, David Duke is a former KKK member who ran for several political offices and eventually had to serve 15 months in prison for tax evasion.
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chuckwolber's journal
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