Archive for the ‘Thanks’ Category

Administrative note.

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

Graduation is over. Back on your heads.

More seriously, the time for introspection has passed. (Also the time for action.) Expect a return to snark, guns, snark, cops, snark, pop culture, snark, art, and snark.

I still have a few things to finish up: thank you notes are being written and mailed, and I need to go through the photos and pull some out for posting.

In the meantime, frankly, things have been kind of slow. I’m not finding a lot of blog fodder; FARK has picked up most of the good stuff, including some “Art, damn it, art!” fodder.

Lawrence did send me an intriguing link yesterday about Rielle Hunter, equestrian, and how her father paid a hit man to kill one of her horses. That William Nack story rings a bell with me, like I’ve read it before, but I don’t remember where. Setting aside the John Edwards angle, it is a fascinating crime story. It reminds me of Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Killing of Alydar”, which was anthologized in one of the The Best American Crime Writing volumes, and which I also commend to your attention. (I believe the BugMeNot link on the side will let you read the full version of the story online, but BugMeNot is blocked at the office, so I can’t verify that.)

I would also like to add one final note, for the record: I will put my family, friends, and coworkers up against any other group of people for sheer concentrated awesomeness. Thanks, gang.

Posted in Admin, Art, Horses, Law, Politics, School, Thanks | Comments Off

A long overdue thank you note.

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

I want to write about someone I don’t know personally, but yet I feel an obligation to them.

This is hard to do. If you don’t carry it off right, you come across as a creepy stalker. Of course, I am not a creepy stalker. At least, not of this person; my creepy stalker exploits are reserved for Kate Winslet (I have been a proud member of the “Kate Winslet Creepy Obsessed Stalker Web Ring” since 1994). I also do hire out my services as a stalker to certain people I know personally. Writing about Marc Randazza made me feel strange and kind of stalkerish, but in his case I had some public accomplishments that I could point to.

More seriously, I’m not saying anything profound by pointing out that electronic interaction is weird. I can have friends I see rarely, and who I communicate with only through the Internet. (There’s a person I know who I would jump in front of a bullet for without hesitation. She lives in London, and the last time I saw her in person was in 1997. Much of our friendship has been mediated through electronic interaction; email, chats on the old Delphi network, and things of that ilk.) There are people I’ve come in contact with since I started this blog who I consider friends, but haven’t met – yet. (But the NRA convention is in Houston next year. Just saying.)

So. Anyway.

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Where do we get such men?

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Staff Sergeant Robert J. Miller was awarded the Medal of Honor on Wednesday.

Sgt. Miller’s unit was ambushed by a group of about 100 insurgents in the Gowardesh Valley of Afghanistan on January 25, 2008. Miller’s unit was pinned down and exposed to devastating fire.

Miller radioed to his fellow troops to seek cover. He then charged the enemy, killing at least 10 insurgents and giving the Afghan and U.S. troops a chance to move to a safer spot, according to U.S. Army reports.

By the way, the award was posthumous; Sgt. Miller was killed in the firefight.

(NYT article.)

Posted in Heroism, Leadership, Thanks | Comments Off

After action report: Las Vegas, NV.

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

I covered a lot of stuff in my previous travel report, so this will mostly just be updates.

  • Project e worked spectacularly well at DEFCON. This is the first chance I’ve had to really push the battery life, and I was able to get an good 12+ hours out of the battery without running it totally dry. (This was with the machine set to “powersave” and putting it into “standby” or “hibernate” when I was in the dealer’s room, or driving around with Mike the Musicologist and Andrew. Continuous usage with the wireless would have been more like 6+ hours, I think, which is still pretty impressive.)
  • My one regret is that I forgot my Alfa external WiFi adapter. I would have enjoyed playing with that at the convention.
  • The 5.11 bailout bag also worked out well for lugging around Project e and various other equipment. Again, I was able to carry a pretty good load, including the laptop, charger, books, a couple of bottles of water,  the small camera, and miscellaneous other necessities.
  • MtM has the Nikon with him and has been taking a lot of photos. As you saw below, I did use the Nikon to take some Gehry photos. When I have more time, I’m going to put up an expanded and annotated Flickr photo set; I did some side-by-side experiments with aperture priority vs. automatic exposure.
  • Food in Las Vegas was, without exception, pretty darn good. The worst meal I had (at the Four Kegs) was still better than average (and I didn’t order the stromboli, which is the house specialty). We also had a very good (if loud) tapas meal at Firefly* on Paradise, the usual wonderful meal at Lotus of Siam, the previously mentioned dinner at Shabu-Shabu Paradise, and a Moroccan meal at Marrakech. (I had not previously had Moroccan food, so I can’t comment on how authentic it was. I certainly enjoyed my meal, and the belly dancer didn’t hurt.)

    Vegas does have something of a shortage of good breakfast places outside of the casinos (and even inside of the casinos, if you’re not looking for a buffet). We had several good breakfasts at Blueberry Hill on Flamingo and one excellent breakfast at The Egg and I on Sahara. I know that MtM and Andrew went to a good Italian place in New York, New York while I was at the convention, and I’ll let them comment on that.
  • Between Tucson and Las Vegas, the refurbished Kindle I ordered arrived, and it went on this trip. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the Kindle later on, but my first impression is “Meh”. I did manage to read John Clark’s Ignition! in PDF format and a Project Gutenberg MOBI format copy of Heart of Darkness without too much trouble, but my experiences with other PDF files and eBooks have been inconsistent.
  • On the other hand, I finished, and highly recommend, Ubuntu for Non-Geeks 4th Edition and am almost finished with Cisco Routers for the Desperate 2nd Edition (also recommended). No Starch Press rocks. And the coupon code “DEFCON18″ will get you a 30% discount. And they’re running a half-price sale on all e-books.
  • My Southwest experience this time was much more pleasant. No misplaced bags, and no flight delays. One thing that was particularly unusual was going through the security line in Las Vegas; I had, literally, no wait. Just walked straight up to the TSA agent and got in line for the metal detector. It took longer to take my shoes off and the laptop out than it did to get through the rest of security.

My thanks to, in no particular order, the DEFCON 18 staff and presenters, No Starch Press, UNIX Surplus, SEREPick, Lotus of Siam, Shabu-Shabu Paradise, Sarah at the iBar in the Rio, and the unknown belly dancer at Marrakech.

Special thanks to my high-speed, low-drag travel companions in the primary, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew “Porous concrete? What were they thinking?” Wimsatt.

Posted in asus_eee, Books, DEFCON 18, Endorsements, Food, Gehry, Kindleing, linux, Photography, project_e, Thanks, Travel | 3 Comments »

I baked you a cake, but I eated it.

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

I’ll be on the road tomorrow, but I did want to note that it is the one year anniversary of Whipped Cream Difficulties.

I’d like to thank Lawrence, Earl, Mike the Musicologist, the crew at Popehat (especially Ken and Patrick), Jay G., Cranky Prof (who I will pour out a 40 for; seriously, Cranky Prof deserves a much longer thank you from me, and I hope to write that someday. In the meantime, I hope she’s out there somewhere terrorizing the stupid and being the shepherd of lost souls.), the rest of the Friday Night Dinner and Saturday Dining Conspiracy gang, and the members of the Academy. I’m probably forgetting some other folks who also deserve thanks; sorry about that, chief. Drop me a line, and I’ll update.

Edited to add: Joe D., too.

I would tell the Google Ads people what they could do, but my mother has been known to read this blog. Suffice it to say, it involves a rusty fence post, a mile of barbed wire, an uncomfortable place, and no lubricant.

Posted in Admin, Thanks | Comments Off

Administrative note.

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Well, this stinks. Just when Jay G. adds me to his blogroll (and thank you very much, Jay), I’m going to be tied up most of the weekend.

Blogging will either be light or heavy, depending on how busy I am and the availability of wifi.

(I do have two endorsement posts I want to write, and at least one draft post I’ve been trying to put finishing touches on for months. In honor of Jay, I’m also thinking about doing some light gun porn, but we’ll see.)

Posted in Admin, Thanks | Comments Off

Heroes for more than one day.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

(I originally had this as an “Edited to add” to the previous post, but decided that it deserved to be broken out into a stand-alone entry.)

Here’s something to get the taste of the last link out of your mouth, and restore your faith in humanity. The Los Angeles County District Attorney gave Courageous Citizen Awards to Quoleshna Elbert and Larry Harnisch yesterday. Ms. Elbert and Mr. Harnisch intervened in a brutal domestic violence incident at considerable personal risk; the victim lived, but sustained serious and permanent injuries.

This is noteworthy to me because Mr. Harnisch works for the LAT as a copy editor. He also runs the paper’s indispensable “Daily Mirror” blog, which highlights L.A. history using excerpts from the local papers. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Harnisch (though I hope to someday) but I’ve admired his work ever since reading his extensively researched takedown of the horrible Donald Wolfe book about the Black Dahlia murder.

Well done, sir, and thank you.

(Hattip: L.A. Observed.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Media, Thanks | Comments Off

Random notes: May 6, 2010.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

OMG! Faisal Shahzad had a Kel-Tec Sub Rifle 2000 in his car!

…all along he possessed a weapon that could have easily done extreme damage, one rapidly fired round at a time.

Later:

It is, in effect, a low-powered rifle. Unlike those of some rifles, its bullets probably would not penetrate a police officer’s bullet-resistant vest, a law enforcement official said.

And:

Unlike the Tec-9, it is not frequently used by criminals, the official said.

Meanwhile, Dana Milbank in the WP asks the musical question:

Is the NRA a terrorist organization?

What prompts this? The NRA’s opposition to barring people on the notoriously unreliable terrorist watch list from purchasing guns.

In other news: Houston rapper that nobody’s ever heard of files lawsuit against local radio station for not playing his “music”.

Trae is suing for general damages to his reputation, character, standing in the community, mental suffering, loss of professional opportunities, performance revenue and record royalties.

I’m looking forward to seeing what legal precedent his lawyer sites that requires a radio station to play someone’s music. Could I sue KGSR for not playing Jonathan Coulton? Even better, could I sue KGSR for playing Kasey Chambers?

Edited to add: “Washington Post puts Newsweek up for sale. Do I hear $1? Anyone?”

Provider 1 bids 300 quatloos on the newcomers.

Edited to add 2: I have been in the practice of noting Roger Ebert’s better negative reviews, especially the one-star and zero-star reviews. A zero-star review from Ebert is pretty rare; he’s stated in the past that for a film to get no stars, it not only has to be bad, but morally reprehensible in some way.

Accordingly, I am going to link to this zero-star Ebert review. I am not going to name the film. I do not encourage you to click on the link. I had heard about this film previously on FARK, and wish I had not.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Hysteria, Law, Media, Movies, Music, Stupid, Thanks | 4 Comments »

Project e, part 4: quick note on Karmicing.

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

John Wells, the guy who wrote the handy guide to installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on the 1005HA and 1008HA (previously blogged here) has a new post up detailing how to upgrade to 9.10 (Karmic).

May his name be written in the Book of Life, and may flights of angels sing him to sleep every night.

Posted in asus_eee, Geek, linux, project_e, Thanks | Comments Off

Steam engine time.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Last Sunday, a blood relative of mine was rear-ended while driving their Toyota Avalon; the force of the collision was sufficient to total the Avalon.

This Sunday, I was rear-ended while driving my mother back from San Antonio in her Toyota Avalon. Fortunately, it does not look like this Avalon is a total loss.

If you drive a Toyota Avalon, or are related to me by blood or marriage, please be careful on the highway until further notice.

(As a side note, Trooper Seth Fry of the Texas DPS was kind, polite, sympathetic, and made a stressful situation somewhat easier to deal with. My thanks to him.)

Posted in Cars, Thanks, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Project e: Part 2: The Ubuntuing

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Before I begin, a couple of notes:

First, I’d like to publicly acknowledge D. D. Tannenbaum as the first person to actually leave a real substantive comment on Whipped Cream Difficulties. (There was one spam comment before his, which I guess makes some sort of pathetic statement about the state of the Internet.) Thank you, sir.

Second, another size comparison:

IMG_0334 (Modified)

That’s my (somewhat beat up, as I’ve been toting it for a while) copy of Learning Python, 3rd Edition. As you can see, the eee is only slightly larger than the book; you can’t see this in the photo, but it is substantially thinner. I wanted to get a weight comparison between the two as well, but I don’t have a scale that will work well for that purpose; manufacturer’s quoted weight for the eee is 2.9 pounds.

On to The Ubuntuing.

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Posted in asus_eee, CompScI, Endorsements, Geek, linux, netbook, Nokia, project_e, Thanks | Comments Off

People who deserve a “Thank You” (part 1 of an ongoing series)

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Joseph Hall, for his excellent set of instructions on setting up WireShark under OS X.

Posted in CompScI, Geek, Thanks | Comments Off