Billy the Martian

One of the things I got done recently was to use some good Applescript scripts to fix up my music collection. The names were all messed up, because I’d used different chunks of software to rip my CD collection over the past few years, and apparently I didn’t always do the right thing with MP3 tags.

Anyway, check out Doug’s Scripts if you’re in the same situation.

So, it’s been a busy weekend. I’d tried to have other plans, but I failed miserably.

I’m sitting in front of a fire on my patio. It’s the most pleasant evening outside that I can ever remember, and I’m using my birthday present. Patrice got me one of those tables that converts to a firepit for my birthday, and it took a few months to arrive. This is the third time it’s been used, and it’s the only time I’ve used it by myself. (The blondes are out visiting Chicago and relatives in Wisconsin.)

There’s nothing better than sitting outside on a lovely day, drinking beers and looking at a fire. I’ll go get the camera so you can enjoy it.

So, we sold the company. Congrats, ipHouse, and good luck to you on your mission.

It feels a bit weird to be out of the ISP biz. Pro-ns was my occupational home for almost 9 years, and that’s the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere. Cleaning out my office last week wasn’t much fun. (Both for sentimental AND physical reasons; I’d accumulated a ton of junk.)

Now I have to figure out what I’m going to do when I grow up. Nuts, thought I’d done that already.

Here’s a good reason to start using Jabber.

This looks like a dumb move on AOL’s part. They’re big enough that they’ll get away with it, I s’pose, but I can’t see it being okay long-term. What if they tried the same thing with email? Google caught heat for a much less invasive plan for gmail.

Guess this is the result of letting the lawyers drive the company. Someone should take the steering wheel back from Legal over there.

(via Slashdot)

First off, check this out from Michelle Malkin

My first reaction to this story is that the nutjob reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, sure has an inflated opinion of herself if she thinks she’s worthy of being assassinated. Apparently, some folks are mailing Instapundit and telling him that the Eason Jordan story must have been true, since Sgrena’s hysteria confirms it.

But you know, now the story includes the rumor that the Italians paid somewhere between $1 million and $6 million for her release, with other speculations that up to $13 million was paid.

I’m not sure if she was definitely ransomed off. I’m pretty sure that I’ve read that her own version of the story includes the fact that she was released after a ransom was paid.

And you know what? If that’s the case, she deserved everything she claims happened, including the obviously untrue claims like being shot at by a tank. She deserves worse, in fact.

If you pay ransoms, you’re funding the next kidnapping and creating a market. Future kidnapping victims have every right to hate your guts. Funding these scumbags is abominable.

(I’m the only person I know, other than author Donald Hamilton, who advocated shooting down hijacked aircraft in order to kill off the market for nutjobs who steal planes at gunpoint. And that was a decade before 9/11. I must be a crank.)

Well, it will have to come out, then!

If you get mail from nobody@cryptofortress.com, and you’re coming here to see what’s up, it isn’t from me. Cryptofortress.com is also the home for a Mixmaster-style anonymous remailer, and the anonymous mail is sent out from that address.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: this is where Bill admits that he talks too much.

Nope, that’s not it.

Jabber is the name of an Instant Messaging environment. It used to be the name of the underlying protocol, but they call that XMPP now. But don’t worry about that.

If you are an ICQ, AIM or MSN user, you should switch. All three of those networks try to lock you in. Imagine what email would be like if your AOL email address only worked to reach other AOL users. (It used to be that way, once, for AOL users. It was unpleasant!)

There are a bunch of Jabber clients for whatever computing platform you use, and there’s lots of servers available. If you like, you can use the server that I’m hosting: rebma.pro-ns.net. It’s set to allow signups from everyone.

If you do switch to Jabber, give me a shout. My JID (Jabber ID) is wmo@rebma.pro-ns.net

There’s some pictures up at my snapshot website of the wedding we went to on Saturday. I’d have to say it was one of the most fun weddings I’ve ever attended.

Congrats, Dave and Lisa.

I’ve been playing the game “Enter the Matrix”. When they were making this game, they made a big deal out of how it tied into the movie, and how they had lots of video footage from the big actors that only appeared in the game. I ignored that as just advertising. Boy, was I wrong. It’s fun, and there’s lots of little plot chunks that you can only learn here. None of them are crucial, but they seem pretty interesting if you’re a big fan of the movie — in that sense, it’s a lot like the Animatrix.

My daughters are selling girl scout cookies. Let me know if you need any.

(I used to buy 10 boxes of Thin Mints from every parent who came by my office. This would result in at least 40 boxes of thin mints every year. Ironically, I lost all interest in Thin Mints as soon as my kids were old enough to sell them.)

I just sent a mildly amusing email to the guys at Powerline.

Thought I’d share it here, too. Dave might be amused.

Hi Powerline fellas,

First off, keep up the good work. I read your blog daily and I’m a big fan.

Given your recent interactions with Nick Coleman, I thought you might be amused by the following anecdote.

Yesterday, while at my office, I got a phone solicitation from the Star and Tribune. It started off with that pause that we’ve all come to know and hate, where you know the person on the other end hasn’t heard you say hello, because the automated equipment they’re using to dial victims hasn’t got things synced up yet. Then this very folksy grandmotherly lady says, “Hello? Oh, my goodness. I thought I was dialing my old friends, the Newtons. They must have re-assigned that number recently!”

Now, here, I had to laugh. My workplace has had that phone number for nearly nine years. And I’m familiar with the organization that had the number before us — we get calls for them on occasion. They must have had the number for several years before us. All in all, a pretty weak story she’s spinning.

Next, she says, “Well, anyway, I’m calling from your local hometown newspaper…” Well, thanks to Caller-ID, I already know she’s calling from the Trib. What’s with the folksy approach, anyway? Do they consider us, their potential customers, a bunch of dumb hicks? And they’ve never heard of Caller-ID? I suppose it’s too much to expect some level of honesty from the telemarketing wing of the paper.

I couldn’t resist, at this point, so I broke in: “Tell you what.” She paused in her script. I said, “Fire Nick Coleman, and I’ll consider getting your newspaper again.”

She laughed right away — there was no pause for shock or surprise. Somehow, I think maybe she’s heard that one before!

I hung up while she was laughing — wish I hadn’t.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

-Bill

Shameless Plug Alert!

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The game teaches you to play Texas Hold’em Poker. It’s designed to teach low-limit Hold’em, which is more like what you’ll find at a casino, rather than the high stakes no-limit Hold’em.

It’s fun.

Update: And we went live tonight! Wooo hooo! It’s downloadable now.

We’re on our way back now. Dropping off 2 deer at locker plant in
Bemidji now. Bringing one home. More details later.

Wow, this sounds familiar. I used the same game plan as Mr. Rosenberg. If I don’t know who they are, I vote against the incumbent, and I never vote for someone who is uncontested.

And I like his novels, too.

We’re back from the Wisconsin Dells and other assorted places. We drove a lot, picked up pumpkins, swam everywhere we stayed, and ate out a lot. The kids had a blast. Most heard phrase on the trip: “Dad! Shutup!”

We’re here! We’re at the Kalahari hotel in Wisconsin Dells. Huge water park. We’re white-raisined now.

I sent this from Jabber.
I even did this Whee from Jabber.

Minnesotans have this odd inferiority complex. It shows up in the local news media, primarily in the TV news. It seems they believe that all news stories, no matter what they’re about or where they are located, must be forcibly related to the Twin Cities somehow.

This observation isn’t original with me, but I’ve been spreading it for years. Almost daily some friend will relate a minor story they saw that got translated to a local story. Yesterday, the story that a British company, source of half the flu vaccine in the world, would stop producing resulted in this comment from a local talking head: “Available flu vaccines may be cut in half for the United States including Minnesota.”

It’s Minneapolis TV. Everyone is in range of that broadcast knows what freaking state we’re in.

My favorite example of this was a story that the Mayo Clinic had discovered a new technique for detecting colon cancer that wasn’t as invasive as a colonoscopy. Now, get this. The Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota. This is already a local story. But this didn’t satisfy the local TV news. They sent a camera crew to a nearby suburb, and managed to find someone who admitted, astonishingly, that they’d prefer a blood sample taken over having a telescope shoved up their rear end. Now, understand, this person had gotten a regular colonoscopy the year before — they hadn’t gotten the chance to try the new method. The camera crew had just been sent out to find some random person who thought the new method sounded good. Just for the local perspective.

All this, for what was a local story to begin with!

I don’t pretend to understand it. I think of it as some kind of inferiority complex. Some folks who live here seem to feel that Minnesota is behind one of the coastal states, and that we don’t do enough to promote ourselves. Or maybe our local news people think that we don’t care about a story unless they can show us how it’s relevant to our tiny, parochial minds.

Beats me. I won’t watch them anymore, and after the Rathergate scandal, I won’t watch the national folks, either.

My Tivo had picked up “Stick” — it’s a movie that I’ve always liked, for two main reasons. The first is that it turned me on to Elmore Leonard novels.

The second was that I was entirely amazed by the teeth-gritting gun blazing fall taken by “Moki” near the end of the movie. Moki was played by Dar Robinson,
who also performed the stunt. (And if you watch it, you’ll see that the actor couldn’t have had a stand-in for the stunt — you can see his face as he falls backward off the balcony.) I followed his career for the next couple years — he did stunts for Lethal Weapon, too.

On a whim, while I was watching the movie, I surfed for Robinson’s name. The page that caught my eye was one that listed his movie credits, where I learned that he had also worked on Rollerball (The 1975 one with James Caan, not the recent piece of trash.) Wow! He’d done stunts in another of my favorite movies.

This guy was a great stuntman.