Bill Ryan's Other Blog

This post should not be taken seriously. If you do, please get some professional help as soon as possible.

Kim and I made a quick trip to the Greer WalMart yesterday.   It’s not WalMart per se but the people that frequent it.  Case in point – we pull up and it was fairly busy.  There were at least 20 loose shopping carts in our parking aisle alone.  (And it’s not b/c the WalMart employees don’t try to collect the carts).  There’s just a lot of low class people who are too self-important to return carts.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see such low class people there that they’ would make fun of people that returned their carts.  I’m sure a kid returning their carts might even get called “Cart Girl” by some of the trashier folks.

Upon entering, I had a serious case of Deja Vu. I was back in undergrad sitting in Advanced Phenomenology studying Sartre.  No Exit was one of his more popular books and was pretty much required reading for Philosophy majors back in my day.  As we walked in, every single motorized scooter was in use and we saw some perfectly healthy woman let her child get on the thing and drive off with it.  The reason I thought of No Exit though was simple.  At the risk of oversimplification, No Exit is about Existential Hell. That’s what, I realized, the case is for the seats of those motorized scooters.  Imagine what being one of those seats is like.  Imagine the view.  Imagine the smell.  It’s hard to imagine anything being worse than being one of those seats.

WalMart has recently rearranged things.  We know that WalMart is a well known hangout for Gangs, including but not limited to Transnational gangs, directly or indirectly, by you.  Well, those days are long gone.  Now, WalMart hosts all sorts of other gangs, including but not limited to Multi-National Gangs, nationalist gangs, block gangs, teen gangs, and directly and indirectly, prison gangs.  So I pay close attention to their Proliferation, being one of the Nation’s Foremost experts on Counter Proliferation.

Here’s the breakdown:

Being one of the world’s foremost experts on Counter Proliferation, my name and face are known by all major gang members.  Upon entering WalMart, visualizing what it must be like being a scooter seat and walking to aisle 1, I was immediately recognized by a major crime boss.  As Kim and I walked around, we could see him following us.  We used a quick evasive technique to get over to aisle’s 5.  Los Zetas are a lot of things, but they at least respect Counter Proliferation professionals such as myself.  Papa was still watching us but now we were in Los Zetas territory and any move by a MS13 member based Baby Diapers and Dog Treats will result in serious retaliation by Los Zetas.  I had a really bad case of Jock Itch and needed the soothing relief of Hydrocortisone but that presented a problem.  The Hydrocortisone is located in an unincorporated area – they aren’t aisles so no gang has them claimed.  on the other hand, b/c no one claims them any gang can make a move on you there without fear of stepping on anyone else’s toes.  Using my advanced Counter Proliferation knowledge, I decided to make a move.  I called my boss Greg and told him to meet me over by the Tampons. As soon as Greg showed up, I filed an official complaint with him about how terrible I was being treated by the gang members.  But that was a ruse.  I immediately snuck around the corner, grabbed a box of Maxi-Thins for Kim and we made a run for it.  We texted Greg and told him to hold down the theater of operations until we could get clear.  Between our current position and the self-service cash registers, we had to cross La familia’s turf, as well as the East Coast Souljah’s and the Boy Scouts of America.  You never know when a scout master might try to take your a33 so I was on pins and needles.  Anyway, we made a run for it paid for our stuff and ran out to the car.  We called Greg and told him we thought we had a tail.  He confirmed our op-sec had been blown but since we both share a common pain in the a55, he’s always willing to help.  Quickly, we dumped our shopping cart behind someone else’s car.  Yah, it’s rude.  Yah, it shows you have no class. But hey, Counter Proliferation is no joke and we had business to do.  We did three loops around the parking lot confirming our tail.  Greg called back and said he was calling in reinforcements.  I got to the straightaway and punched it.  We hurried up home and by the time we got there, Greg confirmed a major crime boss was off the streets.  We thought “Oh boy, we can brag to every kid we know about this and sound really cool.  I said to Kim “remember how we used to whip out our guns and slink around the house every time the wind blew all so we could look like we take security seriously? Well, we look even cooler than that now. I said, “You know honey, even greg knows our OpSec is blown, b/c people or persons have turned on us and are finking us out.  If anyone brings it up, we’ll just lie and claim the traitors are actually double agents working for us.”’

For some reason, my blood sugar was really low and I was ravenously hungry.  The Sausage Dog of Doom knocked over the bong so our fun was over.  As it wore off, I had to realize it was all a lie.  There weren’t any gangs staking me out at WalMart, transnational or otherwise.  MS 13 doesn’t really run aislies 1-4 at Greer Walmart.  The people ratting us out really aren’t double agents.  When we whip our guns out and slink around the house, we look every bit as stupid and cheesy as one would expect.  And yes, when we leave our shopping carts around without taking them back, it’s b/c we’re a55holes and this is just one more example of it.

Counter Proliferation is serious business folks.  It’s no joking matter and should never be laughed at, by you.  The mere notion of laughing about it, directly or indirectly including but not limited to cracking up, or spitting diet coke all over the screen, is a crime against humanity and well, don’t let me catch you doing so.  It’s well known in Counter Proliferation circles that laughing about Counter Proliferation puts the Counter Proliferation Trained personnel and their families lives at risk.  What “At Risk” means exactly is anyone’s guess, but trust me, it puts lives at risk.  Furthermore, joking about it can easily cause people indirectly related to me to be unable to find  meaningful employment.  Don’t laugh, it’s no joking matter!

In my next piece, I’m going to show video footage of Counter Proliferation in action.  By simply examining someone’s fecal matter (aka Turds) you can use Counter Proliferation techniques to determine whether or not they are a gang member or not.  This area of Study is known as “Cornholian Anal-ysis” and “Bungholian Anal-ysis “ (Anal-ysis – get it?).  Remember folks, this isn’t a joke.  Just b/c I make bong references and talk about Cornholian Analysis, that doesn’t mean I don’t take my Counter Proliferation seriously.  I do.   I’ll remind everyone that I am one of the world’s foremost experts in Counter Proliferation. I’ve been Counter Proliferation trained and Certified Undercover for almost 40 years now, more experience than anyone other so called expert you’ll come across.  So feel free to let me know any questions you may have and if you too would like to learn Advanced Counter Proliferation techniques, I’m available for consulting.

[tags]Counter Proliferation, Certified Undercover, Wal Mart, Transnational Gangs, MS 13, La Familia, Los Zetas, Crips, Bloods, Boy Scouts of America, William Ryan, W.G. Ryan, Bill Ryan, Kimberly Ryan[/tags]

It’s SFW per se, but it’s damn sure not safe for life.  If you’re either really masochistic or want to prove how manly you are – proceed at your own peril:

[tags] Jedward, Douchebaggery, Vanilla Ice, David Bowie, Under Pressure [/tags]

I remember when I first read Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, A Bullfighter’s Guide.  Every word in the book is pure, authentic genius.  Every paragraph is so on point it hurts.  And the book completely eviscerates the way most people think they are supposed to speak in an office. One of the critical sections discusses Standard Generalized Presentations.  Of course these involve Powerpoint.  And they include every jargony phrase (think “Resource”) one can muster.  Powerpoint had only been out a year when I was in the middle of Grad School and I remember wanting to gouge my eyes out just so I would never have to sit through another Powerpoint presentation again.  Anyway, they have a whole guide to Fighting the Bull (Rumor has it if you run this on anything written by a PMP or by one’s spouse pretending to be them, the computer will burst into flames and Satan can be seen fleeing the computer).

Love it or hate it, think it’s appropriate or completely over the top, Carly Fiorina’s Demon Sheep ad is certainly not one of your Standard Generalized Presentations.  I don’t know much about her other than what I read in the Wall Street Journal back in the mid-90’s but after this ad, I love her.  Not sure what her politics are but anyone that can make a commercial like this would have to be a lot of fun.  Now, if I made the add, there’d be laser beams shooting from it’s eyes, and they’d fling poop. Actually, lasers would shoot out of their eyes while they threw poop at Transnational Gang members waiting in Aisle 4 of the Greer Walmart, but I digress.  Paul Cassell doesn’t seem to think much of it but I have to disagree.  Most political ads are way more nasty an nowhere near as honest.  They just do it in a sugary sweet way that makes you want to barf (b/c they pretend to take the high road while being totally low-road.). It’s about time people say what they mean.  Besides, I hate FCINOS as much as anyone.

Not to be outdone, one of Fiorina’s competitors didn’t like her stealing the show and came up with this web site as a response.  Oh Noes, someone mocked someone on the web, call the Police!!!!!  Oh Noes, someone told the truth about someone on the web, call them a  liar.  Oh Noes, hurry up and get an attorney to send a nonsensically moronic letter to Chuck Devore (and make sure the attorney spells his client’s name wrong for good measure) making claims with no legal basis.  Seriously though, anyone that actually Shopped an image like this deserves a vote. 

I’d point out however that it’s “All your sheep are belong to us” but when you have such great content, who wants to be a nitpicker. No I’ll return to creating my Demon Cuckoo Ad

[tags]Demon Sheep, S.F.T.E.O.D.S.F.O.P.D., FCINO, Fiscal Conservative In Name Only, Carly Fiorina, Chuck Devore, Tom Campbell, Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep from our Political Discourse[/tags]

Instapundit started it but there’s a lot of material here.

Champs like Serena Williams trust IPad with LeakGuard® Protection to stop leaks better than the next leading brand.

There’s also the ultra small IPad without an applicator.

Considering how everything Apple becomes a defacto hipster status symbol, we can also speak to the Douchebaggery aspects of it as well.

So here we have a product that stops leaks better than the other brands, can be used with or without a bulky applicator and can be used clean up ‘down there’ leaving you feeling fresh and clean.  Apple’s really onto something here.

[tags]Apple IPad, IPad, Tablet PC[/tags]

Thank God it’s finally released so people can shut the hell up about it.  I’m probably the biggest lover of Tablet Computers on Earth and own/have owned several of them and I’m thrilled to see them get more exposure. But the endless deluge of Fanboy douchebaggery that I’ve been drowning in the past few weeks, UHHHHH.

Apple’s new tablet computer is called the iPad. It was announced today after an excrutiating buildup.  It looks like an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch, runs iPhone Apps, and will be shipping later this year. The display is  9.7 inch , it features Bluetooth (big shock), 802.11n (big shock) wireless, a battery life of up to 10 hours (I’ll believe it when I see it), and a 1 GHz Apple A4 chip. Haven’t seen a price yet (but rest assured it’ll be obnoxiously high.  A big part of Apple’s allure is snob factor and they won’t risk hurting that by making it available to common folk)

Live from the Apple ‘latest creation’ event — Engadget.

Sure, I’ll buy one when it comes out.  I’m a petty little man who feels existential danger at the mere thought of someone having a newer/better gadget than what I have. I’ve been a Tablet fanboy since they came out. I’ve spent st00pid amounts of money on tablets time and time again and not really recouped the return on investment.  And it’ll probably sit idle in the garage like most of the other things I couldn’t possibly do without.  Either that or my wife will hide organize all the critical parts (power chords for instance) in some isolated part of the garage rendering the thing useless.  Such a thing would directly and indirectly be annoying but hiding important components is part of the wifely routine, including but not limited to blah blah blah.          

Please, no smart a33 comments referring to anyone directly, no matter how much you hate the aforementioned person (not to be confused with a ‘live-in person’ which is directly and indirectly the same as a non-live-in-person including but not limited to ‘pure evil’, ‘Wicked Witch from the East of the East”’, “WWFTEOTE” etc). 

[tags]IPad, Apple, IPad Launch, Apple Tablet, Tablet PC, Directly or indirectly, including but not limited to, live-in person, minor child, WWFTEOTE[/tags]

I installed a Paypal Plugin last night before heading out to enjoy day 1 of 3, of a beautiful rainy night in Charleston.  Off I went, oblivious to the fact I just nuked my blog.  This morning when I went to track my visits and see what my favorite stalkers were looking at, no blog.  A few rounds of testing and I quickly realized it was down.  The site was still up and so was email, but the blog was down.  Digging into it, I realized it was a Plugin gone bad. I don’t know if it’s the plugin itself or something I did (I used the Autoinstall feature which I will never do again b/c it’s so freaking hard to undo things when you use this method) so I won’t mention which one it was.

With no admin panel to deactivate things, I had to get down and dirty (If I wasn’t a programmer, I really can’t imagine what I would have done other than beg someone to help me).  A few Bing searches, a few SQL Queries later, my site was back up although all of my plugins were now deactivated (a small price to pay overall). 

I would highly encourage you to take great care with plugins. I’ve installed over 20 and 5 have been done with the autoinstall feature, this was my first problem.  Once you install a plugin, hit your site immediately to make sure you didn’t break anything.  If you do nuke your install, read the following:

How to disable all WordPress Plugins directly from the database (You will need to know how to connect to your database and be comfortable writing basic SQL Queries – remember kids, this is MySql so don’t forget your semicolons.

For the less severe problems, this will help, particularly if you’re not all that technical.

A Plugin Broke your WordPress Blog?  Here’s what to do

[tags]Wordpress, Plugin, Plugin Broke WordPress, WordPress Plugins[/tags]

I wouldn’t have.  Bruce Schneier links to an incredibly impressive skimmer that was recently found live, in use, in California.  Check out the pictures and think about whether or not you’d suspect anything funny. And even if you do catch  it, read the whole article and consider if you caught every aspect.   Like Schneier says, he didn’t catch any of it either, and that’s the whole point.

[tags]ATM Skimmer, ATM, Bruce Schneier[/tags]

I was reading Radley Balko’s latest article on some abuses going on in Maricopa County Arizona and the DejaVu almost knocked me over.  Basically, he documents how Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a district Attorney Andy Thomas use the court system to abuse adversaries. All I can say is, you don’t need to travel to Arizona to see this sort of behavior.

Tactic 1 – Claim publication of public information endangers the lives of law enforcement.  The New Times (a popular alternative weekly newspaper) was writing an article on some very questionable land deals Sheriff Joe Arpaio was engaged in.  Early on the good Sheriff made all sorts of accusations about their motives and the accuracy of their reporting so they answered his charges. To do so, they published the addresses about each piece of land in question.  They also published information gained from public documents which are accessible to anyone that would like to see them.  Sheriff Joe’s flunkie Andy Thomas claimed publication of this information put the Sheriff’s life and that of his family in danger.  And he proceeded to try to litigate against the New Times on the grounds that publication of that information violated a very specific state law against publishing specific information about law enforcement employees. I’ve heard more ridiculous claims than this but this is pretty amazing nonetheless.

Among the more egregious examples were Thomas’ charges against the Phoenix New Times, the city’s long-standing alternative weekly. In 2007, the New Times ran a series of articles on some questionable real estate deals involving Arpaio, and as part of the series published the location of tracts of land Arpaio owns, including his home address. Thomas argued that the articles violated a state law prohibiting the publication of the address of a law enforcement officer. Thomas then did something remarkable: His office issued a subpoena demanding the IP address and any indentifying information of anyone who had ever visited the New Times website. Better yet, the subpoena required the publication to turn over any information related to cookies that would reveal what other websites New Times readers were visiting.

“That may have been the broadest subpoena ever issued in the history of the United States,” Bolick says. “It literally violated the rights of tens of thousands of people. Including me, I should add. I read the New Times online.”

The New Times, in a conscious contravention of grand jury secrecy rules, posted the subpoena on its website, concluding that such a blatant and sweeping violation of the Constitution demanded exposure. In response, Thomas and Arpaio had the paper’s owners arrested. After public outcry and criticism from First Amendment proponents across the country, Thomas was forced to drop the charges and withdraw the subpoena just one day later.

Tactic 2 – Overreach

So in response, they subpoenaed everything, IP Address of everyone that visited the site, the identity of each IP address and the cookies.  This is a particularly obnoxious tactic.  By making ridiculous demands, one can seriously hurt another party b/c of the hardship fulfilling such a request causes.  Think about the IP Addresses and cookies issue.  All of that information has to be centrally collected first. It probably already was collected, but it didn’t sit in one place. The subpoena covered anyone that had ever visited the site.  To comply with it, the company would have to dedicate several people and a lot of time and money to fulfill it.  They couldn’t just ignore it so one way or the other, they had to respond. This cost very little to request but costs a ton to fulfill.  So there’s a built in advantage there and an unethical agent could seriously exploit this.  How can they claim they needed to know the identity, ip info and cookie info of people who had visited the site a year before?  How can they claim they needed info about people who didn’t even read the article? 

Tactic 3 – The Threat of Arrest

The New Times editors did what anyone in the same position would have. These thugs were engaging in seriously unethical behavior and were trying to hide behind the cloak of secrecy.  Law Enforcement officers and agencies have some legitimate needs to privacy, there’s no question about that.  Too many times however, individuals try to hide behind their badge to attack and criticize those that put out legitimate information about them, public information  for that matter. How was the public threatened or endangered by the publication of a subpoena? It’s almost as ridiculous as claiming that someone pasting links to the first 4 Google hits on a certain subject endangers someone’s life and the life of their family.  One’s picture identifying them by name and information about their job can sit out in cyberspace for years without a peep, but have an adversary respond to accusations from that person leveled by pointing this out, and it’s ‘Compiling” the information and putting their life and the lives of their family at risk. (Yes, I too can write in that ‘style’ of writing).  It takes some serious chutzpah (or astounding technological ignorance) to claim that a web page containing the first 4 links of a Google search is somehow “Compiling” information that was never compiled before, all the while ignoring the fact that Google had already compiled the information in the first place in what’s commonly known as a Search Results Page!

The New Times simply embarrassed them by bringing to light the actions Sheriff Joe and company were engaged in.  And for that, they were arrested.  Even if you’re vindicated as they were, you still get hauled in. You still have to miss work. You still have to go through all the crap and expense associated with being arrested.  

———————————————

There are a few other tactics I can think of but I’ll save them for a more appropriate post.  The fact is, the same sort of BS tactics are used all the time by people in power against those trying to expose the awful stuff they engage in.  The only thing missing here is Sheriff Joe saying the New Times lied and writing a few incoherent paragraphs about how the New Times is trying to Destroy, Destroy, Destroy Destroy.  I wonder if there’s a secret “How to attack anyone telling the truth about you” playbook out there that they all read from?

[tags]Sheriff Joe Arpaio , Attorney Andy Thomas , Maricopa County, Radley Balko, New Times[/tags]

I bought a copy of Professional Twitter Development with Examples in .NET 3.5 this weekend.  If I said it was phenomenal I’d be insulting it.  It’s a great book from start to finish and Daniel Crenna should be really proud of this b/c it’s truly excellent.  (Here’s his Twitter account if you’re interested in following him, click here)

So I started out reading it this weekend and really liked the coverage on REST and JSON.  It was great coverage and exactly what you’d expect it to be. He moved through the API basics and there was plenty of .NET code to boot. There was even some good Silverlight coverage which was a great touch.  But two things really made this book excellent… OAuth and WCF/Duplexing (He also covers Azure and it’s as good as everything else, but I’m must more into WCF than Azure at the moment so what’s why I pointed it out).

Chapter 6 which covers OAuth ended up ruining my weekend.  We went to Sarah’s swim meets this weekend but got home relatively early.  After we went out, I started playing around with OAuth and it ended up consuming most of my Saturday and Sunday night.  I started at 9:00 PM yesterday and before I knew it, I was staring at a clock that said 3:20 AM.  I was also playing with the Bing API and ideas started coming at me faster than I could write them down.  I only slept for about an hour and was so restless I needed to do something. I ended up starting the day by running 4 miles and had a great time.

Right before lunch, I logged into the doggy cam to witness the dogs wreaking havoc upon our humble abode. I called Kim and asked her to log in.   Even if what you witness is mayhem, there’s something unbelievably cool about being able to watch your dogs from the web.  I had some procedural BS to attend to this afternoon so I blocked out  the afternoon from work.   The Good Lord was clearly smiling upon me today and among other things, all the afternoon crap was no longer necessary.

Sarah’s coming home tonight and we’re going to celebrate her finish at the tournament. We have a Tekken 6 dual planned out so tonight is going to be way cool.  But I got really lucky since I have all afternoon to play around with Twitter Development.  I haven’t played with OAuth before but love it so far.

A great run to start things off, a successful release at work, a free afternoon to code and an evening with my family.  Who could ask for more

[tags]OAuth, Daniel Crenna, Professional Twitter Development with Examples in .NET 3.5, WCF, Twitter, BING API[/tags]

Imagine someone directly and indirectly  sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon including but not limited to with their live-in person spouse and directly and indirectly  two kids. It’s a bright sunny day out and the direct and indirect sounds of birds chirping and dogs barking is in the air. Neighbors are mowing the lawn, others are jogging or walking.  Kids are riding their bikes. It’s an idyllic scene on a beautiful day  The wind blows a door shut in the other room.  Imagine both people hopping to their feet.  The kids stare directly and indirectly wondering why they just jumped up.  They both directly or indirectly grab firearms near by and one of them even chambers a round including but not limited to preparing the gun to fire. Nothing is said to the kids directly or indirectly but the mood gets very tense and very serious including but not limited to extreme quiet.  One adult follows the other directly and indirectly as they peep around corners, retreat then spring forward.  As the leader springs forward, the tail gunner ‘covers’ them including but not limited to turning around backward to eliminate the possibility of an ambush.  They directly and indirectly proceed to clear the house, room by room, by them. In the end, they directly and indirectly find that it was just the wind, no intruder, no nothing including but not limited to an actual person, demon, premonition, ghost, goblin, fairy, vampire or werewolf.

If Kim (who technically fits the definition of ‘live-in person’ )and I were to directly or indirectly do this while our daughter directly or indirectly played video games, including but not limited to the Xbox 360, it would be the height of irresponsibility.  But that’s b/c I’m not highly trained to do such things directly or indirectly, and neither is Kim directly or indirectly, by you. So if we anything including but not limited to  this, it would be seen for exactly what it is, paranoid insanity w/ a touch of wannabe machismo, by you.

A federal agent on the other hand, could directly or indirectly do the same thing and it would be perfectly acceptable, by them.  Federal Agents including but not limited to alphabet soup agencies after all, would never directly or indirectly pull out a gun directly or indirectly but if they did, there’d be absolutely no chance of an accidental shooting. Including but not limited to hurting someone accidentally. 

You can certainly imagine then directly and indirectly, my amazement, including but not limited to sheer cognitive dissonance and shock I experienced both directly and indirectly when I read the following:

A Waupaca woman finds herself in the middle of a major security investigation at Cleveland’s airport.

Kimmy Janke had gone through security. In fact, she was in a secure part of the terminal when she stopped to go to the bathroom before making her connecting flight.

That’s when she found a loaded handgun. . . . A Cleveland police report confirms a fully-loaded .40-caliber pistol was left on top of a toilet paper dispenser. [editor’s note, I wonder if it was a Sig or a Glock   ?]

“A little kid could have grabbed that. The wrong person could have grabbed that. You never know,” Janke said.

We’ve since learned the gun was traced to a federal customs agent. [editor’s note: I substituted ‘federal customs agent’ for the real agency name]

[Agency Name] officials have denied all requests to explain why a highly-trained agent left her gun in the bathroom, claiming there is an internal investigation.

How can this be?   This lady wasn’t the member of some Podunk Police Department including but not limited to Podunk Township Police Department or Bumfuk Egypt Police Department.  She was a highly-trained federal agent and her training included but wasn’t limited to advanced firearms training. Membership of a Podunk Police Department was not directly or indirectly achieved, by her. Federal agents don’t directly or indirectly make mistakes and are never ever ever involved in any firearm accidents (including but not limited to ones that cause death or bodily harm), by them. Never!

Clearly this Kimmy Janke lady suffers from the ignorance, including but not limited to the same cluelessness that I did.  No one directly or indirectly explained to her that gun safety is irrelevant when federal agents are involved, including but not limited to members of the DEA, CIA, FBI, OHS, SSI, Elite Republican Guard or the Elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard. All serious risks, including but not limited to life threatening ones,  immediately disappear when an agent directly or indirectly appears. 

Is  taking a dump in a public stall including but not limited to a urinal, directly and indirectly really that hard? ‘Hard’ for the purposes of discussion means everything including but not limited to, extreme constipation  I directly and indirectly consider myself one of the foremost experts on taking a dump, including but not limited to pinching one out, squeezing out a turtlehead, busting a33, letting one go etc and although I try to avoid public stalls, I’ve managed to pinch one off directly or indirectly in public stalls before including but not limited to airport stalls. In fact, most of my experience ‘in the field’ includes but is not limited to airport stalls.  I’ve seen many gross,  stalls including but not limited to ones with semen on the commode seats, urine on the tank and bowl, graffiti on the stall area and homosexual hookup details, but never had any drama.  I never had directly or indirectly experienced any strangeness, including but not limited to glory holes (well, one I was pretty sure was a glory hole but it looked like it had been decommissioned), wide stances, loaded guns sitting around, nothing.  Why do govt employees directly or indirectly have so much trouble in places including but not limited to  airport crappers?  How’s a gun directly or indirectly different from other devices including but not limited to a Kindle, Laptop or Cell phone ,with respect to stowing it while you do the deed?   What I mean is, the time should not be directly or indirectly put on the floor, by you.  That’s because it’s both directly and indirectly repugnant.  The item should not be directly or indirectly left outside of the stall by, because you don’t want anything bad happening to it, including but not limited to having it stolen.  So a stall is hit, pants and dropped and a dump commences, by you, directly or indirectly, including but not limited to a floater, a one wiper or a blaster  When you’re done, you wipe (I wipe directly and indirectly), put the item under your arm or on the commode tank, zip up, grab your stuff and leave.  It’s really easy.  I know the govt really likes directly and indirectly incompetent people who can only stay employed b/c of ridiculously protective rules, including but not limited to ones rivaling collective bargaining agreements but taking a dump just isn’t that hard (and if it is, you need more fiber in your diet.  And if you eat enough fiber on Christmas Eve, Mr Hankey might even come visit you, directly or indirectly, by him.)

Who knows, all things considered, maybe she’ll sneak off for a few days with Hott Rod directly or indirectly the worlds sexiest boss (“sacrificing my time with [spouse] and [child]”), hoping his live-in person doesn’t get wise to them and hoping her husband live-in person doesn’t overhear any conversations she has with Rod, because that might necessitate “police was called”. This would directly and indirectly include having sexual relations with, buying calling cards for and paying for rooms for, directly both parties, even though one party makes more than the other directly or indirectly.

[The hypothetical situation I propose above is purely hypothetical. Any resemblances, affairs with Rod, live-in persons, spouses overhearing calls, police was called etc are purely coincidental, by you.. All other brands and names are directly and indirectly property of their respective owners, by you.  If an erection lasts for more than 4 hours, consult your physician immediately. I disclaim all liability, including liability for infringement of any proprietary rights, relating to use of information in this specification. I do not warrant or represent that such use will not infringe such rights. In fact, that’s a very strong possibility. Materials are copyrighted and are protected by worldwide copyright laws and treaty provisions. They may not be copied, reproduced, modified, published, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, without my prior written permission, by you. 

My loyal readers may be wondering, directly or indirectly, why I”m writing like this including but not limited to the repeated use of “by you”, “directly or indirectly” or “including but not limited to.”  I directly and indirectly have very little expertise in legal writing so items written, by me, on items including but not limited to legal issues, will employ this format.  As such, features were created, directly or indirectly, by me, to take a text block and legalize it.  This way, items can be written, directly or indirectly, by me using my normal style of writing, yet I can appear to be adroit in items including but not limited to legal writing.  The latest drop of the Bot directly and indirectly includes but is not limited to several methods to legalize writing as well as disemvowel writing, by you.  The method name is not Legalize b/c Legalize has direct and indirect meanings unrelated to what the methods actually do but even a casual reader of this blog should be able to directly or indirectly determine the information, including but not limited to the method names

Hat Tip: Instapundit

[tags] Kimmy Janke, Waupaca Woman Finds Gun in Airport Bathroom  [/tags]

Well, Sarah had another swim competition today and I had my first race in a while.  Sarah did really well and is really making progress.  My girl actually finished 2nd in the Freestyle 50.  She had 4 heats total today but the Freestyle 50 was clearly the highlight.

I ran my race this morning and was stoked in that I did a lot better than I expected.  The bad part is that I’m about where I was in November of last year and well, a totally different runner than i was back before I broke my leg and got heavy.  Rome wasn’t built in a day though, the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step and all of that stuff. I get extremely competitive so this was a big motivator.  I came home and signed up for two more races in the next month and really need to take off the training wheels and look to a 1/2 marathon like Andy Lines is doing.

Andy has taken off over 100 pounds and looks great. His times have moved up dramatically and he’s looking to do a half-marathon really soon.  I’m 2 months away minimum from a 1/2 marathon but I’ll be there before long.

I had never been to Clemson University before and for what it’s worth, i really liked it.  As I’ve mentioned, if I decide to go get another degree, it’ll be a J.D. but just checking Clemson out, it might be cool to take some non-matriculating or continuing ed courses there.  It’s huge, but not too huge and is a pretty cool campus.  I wasn’t able to find Kim until right near the end but I did get some great footage of Sarah’s last 3 races which I’ll post shortly. I used the Flip HD which I love, but unfortunately the file sizes on 1 minute or greater of video is really large.  Kim has some footage too on DVD which she’s editing now.  We’re going to Charlotte to grab something to eat and have a fun night out but will post the vids tomorrow before we head back to Clemson, and then we’ll post tomorrow’s stuff as well.

The 2nd day of Sarah’s tournament is tomorrow so that’s going to be cool – I expect she’ll have a pretty good day.

Sarah and I have plenty of Father/Daughter activities we’ve been doing lately and it’s really been a lot of fun.  Monday for instance, I opted to work from home since she had the day off although I was busy, we had a blast.  We’ve been working on some of the car stuff, the new doggy cam stuff and now that she’s getting into computers, we’ll have a pretty cool website up.  And on the website, I’m not coding any of it. I’m supervising and helping where need be, but the whole thing will be coded by little 10 1/2 year old Princess.

In the past year, Sarah has turned into an obsessive reader.  So much so she’s going to give me a good run for ‘book nut of the house.’  She’s started using the computer more and more and has shown both tremendous interest and ability.  And now, instead of going to dry land practice with the team, she’s going to start running with me.  She’s still got some conditioning to do before she’s accustomed to running, but she’s got the cardiac endurance so before long, I’m sure she’ll be giving me a run for my money too. 

Kim and I are both people who truly enjoy watching Sarah grow up. We guide her where needed, but we enjoy watching her make her own decisions  and become her own person.  Kids often get into things their parents are into and we’ve tried to do our best to encourage her to do her own thing.  We told her she should learn what she can for instance about politics and not just vote for the people we vote for (she’s not old enough to vote yet, but you get my point).  She started to like the music we both like (which terrifies me   and many other things.  But lately, she’s totally starting to be her own person and we couldn’t be more proud.  She’s picked swimming on her own.  What she reads is purely her own interest. The video games she plays are different from what I like (although we both really like Tekken 6).  We do a lot to make sure she understands that just being Sarah is beautiful and she need never be anything else.

But that doesn’t mean that when you see your kid make the same good decisions you’ve made, or like things that you like, that it’s not flattering.  Knowing that we never push our own opinions on her, we know that the decisions she makes are her own. So when she starts enjoying something either of us do  it’s particularly rewarding.  Having my girl spend so much time reading, listening to her play the Cello and now having her as a running partner – well, it’s just more reasons she makes me smile.

I didn’t live the most wholesome life in my younger day and if I had it to do over again, I would do pretty much everything differently.  Somehow though, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful wife and daughter – I really don’t deserve either of them.  It just goes to show that God can overlook anything.

Until tomorrow….

Craig Lynch is a fellow who escaped from Hollesey Bay Prison (Suffolk, UK) back in September.  People escape from minimum security facilities all the time, so what’s the big deal about him?  In a manner reminiscent of Jack the Ripper’s or the Zodiac Killer’s taunts, Craig Lynch has been taunting the cops as egregiously as I can imagine someone doing, via Facebook. (For the clueless, I’m in no way equating what Lynch did with anything Jack the Ripper did.  Jack the Ripper sent many taunting letters to the police which is the only thing I’m saying is common).

If all we were talking about what an escapee taunting police, it wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy either. What’s amazing is the response to it.  In a redux of Natural Born Killers, Craig Lynch has become a celebrity of sorts.  Look at his Facebook page:

The image on this page is obfuscated a bit but he’s extending the finger you’d guess he was extending.  His affiliation if “F*** the System”.  Again, nothing amazing right?  What’s amazing is the number of Google groups dedicated to Craig Lynch.  The most popular one has 40,553 fans!  Even the Z-List groups about this guy have hundreds of users.

He updates regularly and has been free for several months.  He apparently does have some sense of decency in that he’s offended by the accusation that he’d rob or assault an old lady.  He’s definitely got a sense of humor, that’s for sure. 

Not too long ago, I posted about Evan Ratliff aka The Atavist.  He’s a freelance writer who’s job was to completely disappear for a month.  There was a $5,000.00 prize for finding him. And while he did a pretty good job of disappearing, they found him.  Keep in mind the people that found him were not members of law enforcement. Some of the posse were professional private investigators, but they managed to find him without a single subpoena.  They had no official authority and they found him pretty darned quickly.  Ratliff was very careful and took many steps to not get caught. 

By contrast, Lynch is no doubt using some care to not be caught but he’s being quite flagrant. And unlike Ratliff, he’s quick to post pictures.  It’s possible some of what he’s saying is meant to throw off investigators, but what one chooses to lie about invariably reveals quite a bit about what they are lying about.  It’s inevitable.

Now, the only reason the Ratliff contest as a challenge was b/c Law Enforcement couldn’t participate. (And God knows no one would ever look up an adversary or someone they didn’t like in a direct abuse of their power – Strange, I just experienced a really strange feeling of Déjà vu as I posted that link. I wonder why?) If Law Enforcement could participate and treat him as though he was a fugitive, I doubt he could have made it 72 hours unless he camped out in the woods or the middle of the dessert.

So why hasn’t he been caught?  God only knows. I’m guessing though, it’s NOT because English Law Enforcement officials are too stupid or incompetent to use the normal means (like the ones citizens used on Ratliff).  As the Ratliff case PROVED, there’s a WORLD of information you can compile find just using public sources.  So much so many might be inclined to believe someone had access to non-public information.  But that’d be stupid and clueless and like I said, there’s no way that’s the problem here.

So why can’t they find him?  I’m not familiar with British Law Enforcement procedures or the shackles they face, but I’m pretty sure it’s related to the latter.  I’ve been searching around for a while trying to find out why they’re having this much trouble, so far to no avail.  One thing I am sure of without knowing a single thing about English Jurisprudence – anyone that makes this much of a mockery of those in power isn’t going to get much leniency when he sits in front of a judge. 

CORRECTION:

I said that he escaped from a minimum security facility. That gives the impression they were somehow remiss.  From what I’ve recently come across he didn’t escape at all. He failed to return to prison after leaving on a one day pass. 

From the comments on Digg:

He failed to return from a day-pass. He was housed in an ‘open prison’ which allows for day job release, release for home visits and Sunday dinners, etc. with a 7pm curfew. This wasn’t much of an escape, and this guy is clearly a moron since he had less than a year to go after serving over 6.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2204824.stm

[tags]Craig Lynch, Craig Lazie Lynch, Hollesey Bay Prison, Evan Ratliff, The Atavist[/tags]

This is very good news and proof that you don’t just have to bend over and take it when the Feds try to screw you over.

Again, I’d remind you to reread the original article. It was just yesterday that this all had to be done to protect liberty and lives of American citizens etc etc etc. Somehow, magically that all changed in just a few hours.

Actually, what happened is that there was a huge public backlash set in motion by citizens who don’t like being bullied. Dr Reynolds at Instanpundit repeatedly points out it’s very stupid, VERY STUPID, to threaten bloggers and in just about every prominent case, such behavior has blown up in the faces of those engaging in it.

Whenever you hear govt spokespeople making official statements, it’s often like they speak in a different language. In many ways, they do. They use incredible ambiguity to make things sound much more serious than they are. A kid writing on a desk with a pencil is “Vandalism of Government property” for example. You can pretty much count on these official statements to sound as bad as possible so to try to turn people against the target as early as possible. If this sort of crap is true (and not intentionally manipulative BS), then how on Earth does something the TSA said was as serious as this, change so quickly?

It doesn’t. The cat’s out of the bag. The real reason this all happened was that the document they published mentioned this as a Terrorist Attack – not just a Christmas Day Event. That embarassed people in high places b/c it contradicts their official lines.

All I can say is, GOOD. I was pretty sure it’d end like this, but really surprised it happened this quickly. That just reinforces the point. If you’re a blogger and you get threatened, post the stuff and tell everyone. Yell and scream as loud as you can. Trust me, the big scary letters lawyers like to send cut both ways. The more ridiculous their demands and threats, the more stupid they look when you publicize it. Although there are factions inside the government that wish it were otherwise, we don’t live in a Police State and you don’t have to take bullying. (BTW, this also extends to idioticly written, typoladen threats from private attorneys making ridiculous claims for even more ridiculous clients in most cases).

Still no word about the “leave” and what’s going to happen to the original 5 employees.  Even less info about any punishments for the thugs that paid these guys a visit

[tags] Transportation Security Administration, TSA, Christopher Elliott, Steven Frischling, Suzanne Trevino [/tags]

I believe I was a college freshman when The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say came out. The Wikipedia Entry says it was 1989 but I’m thinking it might be off a little b/c I was a huge ICE-T fan, but who’s going to quibble over a few months.

One song in particular, titled not unsurprisingly Freedom of Speech, Just Watch What you Say was IMHO, one of the more brilliant jams.  ICE-T is a deep thinker and although I don’t always agree with him, I always respect him (and the things I disagree with him on are few and far between).  When it comes to freedom of speech, he’s about as awesome as Nate Hentoff IMHO.

So here’s what happened. The TSA put up a document that wasn’t classified or even secured.  A few bloggers got a hold of it and posted it online. It contained some ridiculous/outrageous stuff and the TSA got really butthurt over it.  Here’s the first part of Wired’s story on it:

Two bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber.

Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.

The document, which the two bloggers published within minutes of each other Dec. 27, was sent by TSA to airlines and airports around the world and described temporary new requirements for screening passengers through Dec. 30, including conducting “pat-downs” of legs and torsos. The document, which was not classified, was posted by numerous bloggers. Information from it was also published on some airline websites.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said in a statement that security directives “are not for public disclosure.”

“TSA’s Office of Inspections is currently investigating how the recent Security Directives were acquired and published by parties who should not have been privy to this information,” the statement said.

You really need the rest to see how ridiculous this whole thing is.  They say power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts.  That seems to be particularly true in law enforcement.  Take your average beat cop.  sure, there are some outrages here and there but by and large, your local cops are rock solid – mine here in Duncan, SC sure are.  If I think about my various encounters with the DEA, I cringe. I was unfortunate enough to be near someone they were looking for (I had never met them, had new idea who they were and had no dealings whatsoever).  It was one of the first times in my life I was really scared, and trust me, i don’t scare easily.  I remember back when I had to deal with a multi-agency raid at a company I was working at.  No violent crimes were even alleged and the owner was a very affluent respected member of the community. Yet the FBI and several other agencies came in, with full body armor, Glocks and Sigs ready for action.  Our legal counsel on staff was calling our corporate law firm when a FBI agent said “everyone step away from your desks”.  The thing was, he had just gotten permission from the FBI Agent who was in charge of everything.  This officer told Joe (a name I’m just making up) to step away from his desk.  Joe identified himself as legal counsel (the nameplate on his door said the same thing) and said Agent So and So just said it was ok.  He said again, put the phone down. Joe repeated himself and asked that Agent So and So be called over to verify. He reminded the agent of his legal right to make this call. At that point, the agent unclipped his holster and grasped his gun.There were so many other abuses it’d warrant a post of itself.

I have had dealings with other federal agents and I can’t think of one time I’ve not seen an abuse of power.  For the record, in the first case with the DEA – after searching me and having the dogs come out and sniff everything, I was completely cleared and allowed to go on my way. This was after 3 hours of detainment of me and about 25 other people – all of which were completely innocent and had nothing to do with the supposed drug dealer.  The company I was at was also completely cleared and one of the prosecutors was ultimately removed for misconduct on another case.  However the $1,000,000.00 dollars and time lost for my old boss was never recouped or returned.

Anytime you say anything that a Federal Agent doesn’t like, watch it.  First they’ll probably accuse you of lying. When you defend yourself, they’ll use the material you used to defend yourself as proof that you disclosed something improperly. And of course, they’ll say you put their life or lives of their family in jeopardy.   Telling the truth about anything  improper agents do ALWAYS means you’re revealing something they’ll take issue with.  They usually get really indignant about the assertion that they’d abuse their power. If you see all of this happening –BANK ON IT, you’re in for a fight.  I have also received ‘anonymous’ information before along the same lines. It’s not uncommon for people who want  a story to get out but are afraid of retaliation to send out the information to people they know will publish it.  I’ll be posting it in the near future and it’ll definitely ruffle some feathers. My point though is that this isn’t uncommon and what’s happened here can happen to a whole lot of people. It’s truly an outrage.

Fortunately, we have plenty of means to publicize such abuses. And such abuses can’t exist with daylight shown on them.  The more people that stand up, the more bloggers that cover such abuses, the less they can get away with it.  Ice-T was right though.  We do have Freedom of Speech, you just really better watch what you say (and whatever you do, don’t ‘compile’ the top three hits on Google. Even though Google’s search results already compiled them, if you do the same  prepared for a lot of BS.  Thank God the bloggers have decided to fight back.  And the best way to do that is to publish all the crap they receive. If the govt is really right, it’ll be self-evident. If it’s a matter of people covering up incompetence and screw ups, it’ll be readily evident too.

I’ll give the local cops and even state police the benefit of the doubt all day long – IMHO, they truly deserve it.  Until Federal Law Enforcement cleans up its act, well, Not so much.

Look at these poor guys.  Read what they went through .  Read the Official BS Line. Read the dramatic language the feds used (do they teach you how to make everything sound so freaking dramatic in Fed school or something?)  Then re-read this:

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

…..“They were indicating there would be significant ramifications if I didn’t cooperate,”

…”The agents searched through Frischling’s BlackBerry and iPhone and questioned him about a number of phone numbers and messages in the devices. One number listed in his phone under “ICEMOM” was a quick dial to his mother, in case of emergency. The agents misunderstood the acronym and became suspicious that it was code for his anonymous source and asked if his source worked for ICE — the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

 

You can read the blogs referenced here, here and here.

One last thing.  This is a big screw up right?  Remember that big screw up called 9/11? Anyone want to give me the names of everyone that was fired as a result of it?  I’ll gladly give you $1,000.00 for each one. This is clearly a screw up even by the TSA’s own admission.  After all

Five TSA workers were put on leave pending an internal investigation into how that document got posted

Anyone want to take bets that this will be the last we here of it?  Anyone want to bet it’s PAID LEAVE (It always is when they don’t mention it one way or the other).  Paid leave is called  a freaking vacation last time I looked  but I don’t know for a fact that it’s paid leave so I don’t want to jump to conclusions.  I’m betting right now no one will be fired, no one will be seriously disciplined either. Any takers?

[tags] Transportation Security Administration, TSA,  Christopher Elliott, , Steven Frischling, Suzanne Trevino[/tags]

2009 was a pretty mediocre year overall, but Kim decided to end it with a bang.  She finally accepted the fact that she’s married to a geek and embraced the geek chic while shopping for me.  One of the things she got me was a Cisco WVC210 Wireless G PTZ Internet Video Camera.  We’d been talking about installing some Doggy Cams for a while, but I really wasn’t expecting this.

Historically, the little bit of talent I have resided exclusively in the software realm.  When it came to wiring up anything, I could make a mess or an accidental explosion, not much more.  Trudging through the learning curve though, I started making some progress.  My crowning success for the year WAS turning the interior of my car into a fully functioning T-Mobile Hotspots (I really didn’t think much about having built-in BlueTooth in my car at first, I’ve since learned to really love it b/c with Wi-Fi and the Hotspot, it’s all kinda wireless).

This whole thing started as a father/daughter project and grew.  Santa brought her a NetBook to use with her Webcams so between the XBox Live acct and this, she’s going to be the highest tech kid in SC.  I tried getting it working in the car, not b/c it’s practical or even desirable, but just to see if I could get it to work.  As you drive, you roam and the IP Address is reassigned regularly (in this case, I’m roaming a lot so that’s the most likely culprit) so the forwarding is problematic.  Basically, you can see what the camera is looking at from a computer in the car even while moving. You can look at it over the internet if you sit still.  But for now, that’s all I was able to pull off.  I’ll be checking with the DynDNS.org folks to see if I can get something working while driving, but for now, I’m not expecting any miracles.

The WVC210 sat in the box for a day while we attended to other holiday duties (Santa brought me DJ Hero as well which took precedence).  Setup couldn’t have been easier and here’s what it took from start to finish (Finish being defined as ‘available and on the internet’):

1. Setup requires a CAT5 connection from the camera to the switch (or router).       
2. You need to connect the power cable.                                                  1 minute w/ #1 combined
3. Stick the install CD into a computer and start wizard.                            1 minute
4. Software needs to find the device.                                                         2 minutes
5. Walk through the wizard.                                                                     4 minutes
6. If all works correctly, here’s what you’ll see.
7. Add user accounts.                                                                                              3 minutes
8. Login to account (I used DynDNS.org)                                                                     1 minute
9. Retrieve your settings and write them down or commit them to memory.                  30 Seconds
10. Login to Router and set up Port Forwarding.                                                            3 Minutes
11. Go  to Internet and verify everything works.                                                                2 minutes
12. Enjoy

From start to finish, the whole thing took just about 15 minutes.  There’s one thing I sort of fibbed about.  DynDNS.org is awesome and very easy to use but I screwed up Port Forwarding the time around.  I tweeted asking if anyone knew how to troubleshoot.  Within a few minutes, Chris at DynDNS.org wrote me back and offered direct support.  I took a stab at the Port Forwarding on my own and it worked like a charm, but the whole DynDNS.org was awesome and I’m hooked.

Now a few months ago, someone cracked our doorbell chime.  I’m definitely not qualified to play with electric so it’s just sort of been sitting in limbo for a while. The additional cameras are perfect for such tasks.  Instead of looking like a lame a55 that can’t fix a doorbell, I look way cool for having video monitoring at the front door.  Coupled with some of the X10 (yep, after years of rolling her eyes, Kim has seen the light on X10 and become a fiend believer) stuff we bought recently, home automation has made a lot of progress recently and it’s been absolutely painless.

Anyway, once I got everything hooked up, the final step was removing the wires so it was fully wireless.  That was as hard as unplugging the cable and viola’, it was good to go.

Nothing big or impressive about a Webcam so what makes this blog worthy other than bragging about a wife cool enough to support my inner geek?  Here’s a few:

• It’s cake plugging in additional cameras.
• It provides two way audio which makes it perfect for a doggy tormentor cam or a door monitor.  The Sausage Dog of DOOM has reported back that he does not like me and mommy being able to watch him destroy our living room. What’s more, he really hates that we can say “NO!”  or “Stop it Nikki!” without having to be there.  From my point this is a huge plus, from an evil Sausage Dog’s perspective, it’s a bug.
• You can fully control the camera remotely.
• You can turn on motion detection so it follows around what’s moving.  Coupled with the previous item, this makes it an ideal Doggy cam .  This feature allows you to have emails sent to you directly when motion is detected and you can do really slick stuff like this too.  If only I could get it to recognize gestures, like, a small sausage like dog lifting up his rear left leg… I know I read an article a few years back of a guy that did something similar for his cat.  The cat would drag in dead animals which was a real pisser since he was often out on business for a few days at a time. So he wired the webcam to the cat door and if it detected an anomaly (i.e. a cat shaped critter with a a really wide thing in its mouth, it would lock the door)
• You can record sessions – disk space is your only real limitation. This makes it great for surveillance in business or home scenarios.
• It’s wireless so you can place it in strategic places without “those wires” which drives wives and anally retentive geeks nuts.
• There’s a very easy to use, web based administrative console. 
• Everything is URL addressable
• Features such as Panning and Tilting are available right out of the box.
• All of the functionality can be used w/out any programming

The downsides are few and in all fairness, I’ve only really had it a day or so and I haven’t dug in deep enough to be sure all of these are in fact, valid:

• The instruction manual is really thin. There’s a quick start and that’s pretty much it.  There is comprehensive online documentation however
• You may have to reset the camera once or twice before it can be seen by the software.  I had to reset it twice before it was recognized.  All in all though, this only took about a minute to accomplish
• There is very little guidance along the lines of security.
• I don’t know if there’s an exposed API. The control panel is pretty decent and does everything I need it to but it’d be nice to be able to write custom software to take advantage of it.  My guess is that there is something I’ve just missed it.  The viewer an ActiveX control but I’m going to try sniffing the wire and see if I can recognize any of the traffic.  If you run it securely this won’t work but it may give me a starting point of where to look.
• It appears you have to have it plugged in (i.e. no battery). Coupled with the size, it makes it kinda obvious that it’s there. This is a bug or a feature depending on what you’re using it for.

[tags] Cisco, Video Surveillance, Cisco WVC210, Internet Video Camera, DynDNS, BlueTooth, X10, Home Automation [/tags]

YouTube sensation RecklessTortuga has a new spoof video titled The Online Gamer. If you enjoy lauging at gamers or are a gamer who can laugh at him|her|self, you’ll enjoy this. Yeah, the main character maps quite well to the stereotype but stereotypes sometimes become widespread b/c there’s some element of truth to them. I’m sure there are plenty of unemployed overweight slackers who live at home and play games all day in mom’s basement, but this is probably a much more accurate portrayal. Be forewarned however, the language is definitely NSFW. And in typical RecklessTortuga form the acting is very convincing. I’m thinking though, even hipster/peacenik types would probably have hopped over the table and killed him. Any girlfriend I’ve had would probably have thrown the video game system out of the window or attempted a more invasive means of disposing of it.

While you’re at it, check out a few other skits that are as hysterical as they are accurate:

• PSA “New Yorkers” (Ouch)
• Twilight Fan **New Moon Trailer** (Now we see where Perez Hilton learned to make YouTube vids)
• New Moon Screening
• The entire Psycho Girlfriend series: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3,  Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6 and Episode 7.   
• Crazy College Roommate (Keep an ear out for the Adkins Diet reference)
• Online Dating (like she’d actually need to hit the internet to find a date?)
• Russian Mail Order Brides , Episode 3, Episode 4 (“They call this little guy, Fluffer“, “She gets how you call it, Pearl Necklace“, “I get rich, I get Money Shot“),
• Asian Characters on Non-Asian people (“They might even call you a douchebag”.  Yep.  It’s amazing how every Tattoo w/ Asian characters means “Wealth”, “Prosperity” or “Sex”)

If you like the YouTube vids, you can check out the rest of their stuff here.

[tags]Reckless Tortuga, RecklessTortuga, Online Dating, Psycho Girlfriend, Twilight, New Moon, YouTube[/tags]

The internet has been a curse to old media outlets.  They once had complete control of ‘the news’. But the internet has changed all of that and fast.  Layoffs and falling stock prices happen with as much fervor as the denunciations of bloggers by MSM types.  The MSM gets stuff right. They fact check.  They are professionals, not just some malcontent in pajamas (oh yes, and the MSM never stereotypes).  There’s a lot of crap floating around the internet, no doubt.  There are times where the blogosphere hops all over something that turns out to be BS.  There’s a lot of misinformation.  But on the whole, the blogosphere is a lot more credible than any media outlet I know of.  Any charge you can levy against the blogoshere is equally applicable to the MSM.  Hell, every word I’ve written so far has been written a hundred times before and is self-evident to anyone outside of the media and the fiefdoms it protects.

As I read this, I can almost hear Winston Wolf telling Vincent and Jules “… before we all start sucking each other’s d****…”  B/c that’s exactly what’s Marc Fisher is doing.

Today’s Pick Story of the Day is a testament to reporting, about as basic and straightforward a story as can be imagined, yet one that performs the ultimate public service. It’s a simple narrative built from classic reporting. The Post’s Matt Zapotosky was assigned to figure out just what happened Saturday, when, during the biggest snowstorm ever to hit Washington in a December, people spontaneously gathered at a major intersection to have a friendly snowball fight, only to find some lunatic–in this case, a D.C. police detective–waving a gun at them and threatening to turn the whole wonderful scene into a horror show.

Many readers will have already read sketchy summaries and eyewitness accounts of this incident at 14th and U streets NW on the blogs, or seen various versions of the stunning video on YouTube. But Zapotosky, in clear, unemotional prose, goes out and finds the puzzle pieces and puts them together, so we learn that the snowball fight wasn’t quite as spontaneous as it had first appeared, but rather was another little triumph of social media organizing. There are still a few missing pieces–we need to know at some point exactly who this detective is and what his record is and what was in his head as he scared the bejesus out of a big crowd of the people he’s supposed to be protecting. But as a first draft of what happened, this is a story that adds value through reporting, and that’s what it’s all about.

To this idiocy, Radley Balko responds with the following (and as always, he’s spot on):

Thank goodness the Washington Post didn’t perpetuate irresponsible Internet rumors on that snowball fight story. Instead, they went straight to MPDC for the official version of events, unskeptically published the resulting lies from the department’s spokesman, after which WaPo columnist Marc Fisherput up a smug blog post gloating about how responsibly the paper treated the story, as opposed to those hysterical blogs and Internet sites. Never mind that the blogs and videos had proof the WaPo got the damned story wrong. Facts aren’t as important as who followed journalistic protocol.

The official story coming from the DC PD is crap.  Now they are claiming that the officer was responding to a call and the call reported  someone in the crowd had a gun.  Sure.  Just like every time a bad cop beats someone up, it’s always b/c they were resisting arrest. Funny how that little fact only came out way after everything already blew up. Funny how he never makes mention of it. Funny how, if he’s so scared of a gunfight that he needed to draw, he stood around and talked smack for a few minutes before every taking it upon himself to do any investigating.  Before long, he’ll probably be complaining that people posting links publicly available on the web are endangering his family or something equally dishonest.   Watch the whole thing for yourself, it’s pretty clear what happened. No amount of context is going to change this.

[tags]Marc Fisher, Snowball Fight, Detective Baylor, Radley Balko[/tags]

About a week ago, a story came across the wire about Iraqi insurgents hacking our predator drones using little more than stuff bought at a Radio Shack.  There was a lot of hysteria and misinformation but the real news isn’t a whole lot better.

Anything that echoes back information can have that information possibly intercepted.  The same mechanism that is used to read the info can be used by someone else.  (For those of you old enough, think back to the Darth Vader HBO Hack).  Ideally, this information should be encrypted and well, I thought pretty much everyone did.  Back when i worked at Discovery Channel Latin America (’97) we regularly did encryption tests and it was a huge deal (ostensibly b/c interception of their signal was such a big deal).  Anyway, grabbing onto an encrypted signal is one thing, actually taking it over is a whole different one.  It seems really pathetic but it’s conceivable that you could leave the echo unencrypted, it’s inconceivable that the control signal would be left open.

Anyway, here’s the latest….One quote sums it up pretty well..”.This was just one of the signals, a broadcast signal, and there was no hacking. It is the interception of a broadcast signal”

Still piss poor but not nearly as bad as the original posts.  If someone could gain control of a predator, they could crash it or use it against us, all of which would be devastating.  IMHO, Predators are an excellent weapon both in terms of efficacy and in terms of human lives.  Right now, only we have them. But as time goes on, they’ll become cheaper and more mainstream.  If you have to fight wars, Robots fighting Robots seem to be the ideal IMHO b/c that reduces human casualties.  I know Code Pinkos don’t like them, but that’s b/c Predators reduce the # of dead soldiers they can exploit… that and the fact they hate America.  It’s hard for most people to imagine how Predators actually work (or how amazingly accurate they are) so it wouldn’t be hard for anti-Predator types to demonize them.  This was a bad screw up which hopefully didn’t result in any deaths, but it’s easily fixed and hopefully we won’t have any screw ups like this again.

[tags]Predator Drones, Predator Hacking[/tags]

Wired has the story. Unlike GM, Ford isn’t forcing you to use a specific modem or plan, so you can plug in your own modem via USB and have at it.

Ford is taking a decidedly different approach, opting to allow consumers to plug in their own USB modem to get connected. General Motors, on the other hand, offers a dealer-installed system called Chevrolet Wi-Fi by Autonet Mobile. It creates a Wi-Fi hot spot 300 feet in diameter around the vehicle, and GM claims the 3G network achieves speeds of up to 1.5 mbps. The hardware costs $199 after the $200 mail-in rebate, and the service costs $29 a month.

The reports I saw previously all stated there were some really lame limits on bandwidth usage on the GM plan, this makes it look fairly reasonable though.

Assuming the actual price of $399.00 and $29.00 a month, it seems a little steep.  Unlike a lot of other things, you can easily fit the travel modem under your seat out of view of everyone. It can be powered by an extra power jack and you can run a line into your car’s electrical system with relative ease.  You’d never know I had  a hotspot in my car if you weren’t looking for it, and I did the whole thing for well under $200.00.  But having it run through Sync is cool and on the whole, I think it’s a great feature.

I drive back and forth to Charleston SC every week for instance, and for some reason, there’s a huge XM Dead zone.  Nothing is more frustrating that listening to Howard Stern, and right before a cool guest like Snoop Dogg comes on, having it die.  For about an hour, I typically get only intermittent coverage (and that’s with built in XM and a high powered antenna).  So I’ve gotten very into listening to Zune or YouTube.  You see something or a song pops in your mind and you want to hear it.  Open up Zune, download it, and 2 minutes later you’re listening to it.  Or you hear a song and don’t know who it is. You put the lyrics you can discern into Bing, and in virtually every case, you’ll know the song’s name and composer in just a few seconds.  From there you can try to buy it on Zune Marketplace (or iTunes if you’re an iPod type) or listen to it on YouTube if it’s not available for sale yet.  Another really cool feature is using Text to Speech while driving.  I’ve been a complete Jackass and sent/read way too many text/email messages while driving. It’s dangerous and irresponsible and I openly acknowledge I’m an a-hole for doing it.  So I got the wild idea to allay my guilty conscience by using the Tablet’s TTS feature.  A new email comes in, you can just have it read you the contents.  Compared to my last car, my current ride is like a sensory depravation tank when it comes to road noise.  That’s quite handy b/c you can compose messages and send them as well using voice commands.  It’s not as quiet as the house, so the ambient noise can be a problem particularly when you’re in bumper to bumper traffic, but on the whole, it works pretty well.  Vehicle Wifi has made me and my immediate family members much happier commuters and I’m sure most people will become immediately hooked once they give it a try.

[tags]Sync, Wifi, Vehicle Router, XM, Sirius[/tags]

Can you blame them?

Paid escorts everywhere are especially aggrieved by the hooker title being conferred upon thoroughly contemptible politicians; including Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson.  Nebraska Democrat Nelson, who was elected on a pro life platform, sold millions of unborn babies in exchange for extravagant tax payer funded perks for his soon to be former home state.

[tags]Hookers, Prostitutes, Politicians[/tags]